Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of home-based NHS care on hospital admissions.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst no comprehensive quantitative assessment has been made, we recognise that home and community-based National Health Services play a crucial role in preventing admissions for people with conditions that can be safely managed in the community, thereby helping to manage demand pressures on accident and emergency departments, and improving patient experience.
Key features of home and community based services include: anticipating and preventing exacerbations using personalised care plans delivered through neighbourhood health teams for people with long-term conditions and frailty; directing people to the most appropriate service at first contact using clearly established routes for clinical advice supported by digital tools and neighbourhood teams; and delivering integrated community based services including Urgent Community Response, Hospital at Home, and therapy-led intermediate care.
Our Urgent and Emergency Care Delivery Plan, published in June 2025, commits to increasing the number of patients receiving urgent care in the community by expanding these services.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients in (a) Buckinghamshire and (b) Milton Keynes have received home-based NHS care in each of the last three years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England does not hold data on the number of patients in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes who have received home-based National Health Service care in each of the last three years.
The NHS provides a range of services in peoples’ homes such as community health services, virtual wards, community mental health support, and palliative care.
The 10-Year Health Plan sets out our vision for a Neighbourhood Health Service.
The Neighbourhood Health Service will embody our new preventative principle that care should happen as locally as it can, digitally by default, in a person’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and only in a hospital if necessary.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has assessed the potential effectiveness of digital scheduling tools in improving outpatient capacity.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the Elective Reform Plan, the Department is committed to ensuring that outpatient capacity is planned and used effectively, and that processes are streamlined to free up capacity where possible. This includes ensuring that all appointments are necessary and reducing missed appointments.
Digital scheduling tools like the NHS e-Referral Service (NHS e-RS), the NHS App, and the Manage Your Referral service are key enablers of this. The NHS e-RS is a digital platform used for referring patients from primary care into elective services. Manage Your Referral is the patient facing side of the NHS e-RS, allowing a patient to book, check, change, or cancel their first outpatient appointment online through its website or through the NHS App.
The 10-Year Health Plan builds on this vision. It introduces tools like My NHS GP, My Choices, and My Specialist for personalised scheduling. By 2028, the NHS App will become the primary gateway for patients to book appointments and manage their appointments. The Medium Term Planning Framework, published in October 2025, sets out the initial phase of this work starting this year, to bring forward a roadmap for the delivery of the NHS App’s functions as described in the 10-Year Health Plan. This will help deliver a technology-enabled model of planned care which gives patients one place to manage all their appointments, referrals, and interactions, while bringing efficiencies that reduce referral-to-treatment times.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to introduce mandatory reporting on productivity improvements linked to capital investment.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to ensuring that capital investment in the National Health Service delivers measurable improvements in productivity and patient outcomes. While there is currently no mandatory reporting framework specifically linking capital investment to productivity gains, NHS organisations are expected to demonstrate value for money and the impact through business case processes and post-project evaluations. The Department is exploring options to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation of capital investments, including how productivity gains can be more systematically captured and reported in future.
More broadly, the NHS plans to begin regularly publishing assessments of productivity performance against the 2% year-on-year improvement target we set in our 10-Year Health Plan. Data published in September 2025 showed an estimated 2.7% year-on-year improvement in acute productivity in the NHS over the 2024/25 financial year, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/patients-treated-more-quickly-as-nhs-productivity-rises-over-year
Early data for the first quarter of 2025/26 suggests this trend is continuing with a further 2.4% improvement in acute productivity, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/nhs-recovery-continues-with-above-target-productivity-growth
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has undertaken analysis of productivity variation across integrated care systems.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department recognises the importance of understanding productivity variation across integrated care systems (ICSs) to support improvement and to ensure value for money. NHS England routinely collects and analyses data on performance outcomes across ICSs, which is used to provide insight into relative performance at a trust level.
For acute providers, this is included in the NHS Oversight Framework and trusts are segmented based on the latest estimates of a range of metrics, including productivity performance, and ranked in the NHS league tables, which are available at the following link:
https://data.england.nhs.uk/dashboard/nofacute
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of the 23 million (a) toothbrushes and (b) toothpastes will be provided to early years settings in Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information is not available at constituency level. In 2025/26, Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes City Council have received 5,544 toothbrushes for use in early years settings, 4,812 toothpastes and 3,660 toothbrushes for children to take home. This equates to a proportion of 0.3% of the total allocation of products from our partnership with Colgate-Palmolive for this year. Product allocations are based on the number of 3-to-5-year children living in the 20% most deprived areas in England. Allocation of products for subsequent years will be confirmed in partnership with the councils and Colgate-Palmolive.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what baseline data his Department holds on the number of hospital tooth extractions among 5-9 year olds in (a) Milton Keynes and (b) Buckinghamshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) publishes annual official statistics on tooth extractions, which include five- to nine-year-olds, that take place in a National Health Service hospital setting in England. The following table shows the number of finished consultant episodes (FCEs) for all tooth extractions and for tooth extraction with dental caries, also known as tooth decay, as the primary diagnosis code, for the 2023/24 financial year, for children aged five to nine years who reside in Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes:
| All tooth extractions | Tooth decay-related tooth extractions |
Buckinghamshire | 115 | 95 |
Milton Keynes | 40 | 35 |
Source: OHID’s annual statistics on tooth extractions for zero to 19 year olds that take place in an NHS hospital setting in England, available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hospital-based-tooth-extractions-in-0-to-19-year-olds
Notes:
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of 3-5 year olds who will join the supervised toothbrushing scheme in Buckingham and Bletchley constituency in each of the next five years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The requested information is held at upper tier local authority rather than at constituency level. The national supervised toothbrushing programme targets 1,830 people aged between three- and five- years old living in the 20% most deprived Lower Super Output Areas of Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes City Council (ONS Indices of Multiple Deprivation mid-2020 population estimates). The final number of children participating in schemes will be determined by rates of local participation at individual settings.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what criteria his Department applied to define deprived areas for the provision of free dental products in early years settings in the Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
National supervised toothbrushing programme funding and free dental products are based on the Office for National Statistics’ Indices of Multiple Deprivation mid-2020 population estimates. These were used to identify the number of three to five-year-olds living in the 20% most deprived Lower Super Output Areas of local authorities, including Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes City Council.
Asked by: Callum Anderson (Labour - Buckingham and Bletchley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department has provided for supervised tooth brushing in early years settings in the Buckingham and Bletchley constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Funding for 2025/26 has been allocated at upper tier local authority level. For Buckinghamshire Council and Milton Keynes City Council this was £61,842.36 for supervised toothbrushing in early years settings. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-health-grants-to-local-authorities-2025-to-2026