Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 23 November 2023 to Question 1512 on Prescriptions: Fees and Charges, what percentage of prescriptions are exempt from charges due to (a) Prescription Prepayment Certificates and (b) other reasons.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The NHS Business Services Authority collects data on the number of prescription items that are exempt from charges. 5% of prescription items are paid for at the point of dispensing. 95% of prescription items are exempt from charges, and within this figure 3% are covered by a Prescription Prepayment Certificate (PPC). The remaining 92% includes every item with an exempt category or “unknown” exemption category so may also include some PPC exemptions.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her policy to pay (a) nurses and (b) other healthcare and NHS staff for the extra hour they spend on shift when the clocks go back.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Most nurses and other healthcare staff that are directly employed by National Health Service organisations are covered by national terms and conditions of service. These national terms and conditions do not make specific provisions, including pay provisions, for shifts that cover the period when the clocks change twice a year. This is therefore a matter for NHS organisations to determine locally, taking steps to ensure that consistent approaches are taken.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her Department's expected timescales are for integrated care boards to report on how much of their dental funding allocation they have used in the 2023-24 financial year; what estimate her Department has made of how much of the total allocation (a) has been and (b) is forecast to be spent on (i) other priorities and (ii) returned to NHS England; and if she will make it her policy to rollover any underspend in the primary dentistry budget to create more NHS dental appointments.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
NHS England has provided guidance for integrated care boards (ICBs) that requires dental funding to be ringfenced, with any unused resources re-directed to improve dental access in the National Health Service in the first instance. A schedule setting out the dental ringfence has been issued to ICBs. NHS England’s 2023/24 revenue finance and contracting guidance, which provides more detail, is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/2023-24-revenue-finance-and-contracting-guidance/
ICBs report their expenditure against the dental ringfence to NHS England as part of in-year financial reporting. Data for the 2023/24 financial year will be available after the end of the current financial year. NHS England’s finance business rules set out the approach to managing prior year under and overspends. The latest business rules are available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/icb-and-system-finance-business-rules/
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people (a) on the prescription charge exemption list, (b) over 60 years old, (c) on the NHS low income scheme and (d) on benefits that qualify them for free prescriptions received free prescriptions for each condition in the last five years.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
A list of people who are exempt from prescription charges is not collected or held centrally. The NHS Business Services Authority collects data on the number of prescription items that are exempt from charges. For the financial year 2022/23, 95% of all items dispensed were exempt from prescription charges due to items being covered by a prescription prepayment certificate or exempt from charges because the person or medicine was covered by an existing exemption.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many women (a) have been assessed to need and (b) are receiving (i) drug and (ii) alcohol recovery services.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Information is not collected centrally on the number of women assessed by drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services. Drug and alcohol treatment in England is commissioned by local authorities, who are responsible for assessing local need in their area, and commissioning a range of services and interventions to meet that need. The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) provides oversight of local delivery at a national level and continue to monitor implementation against the aims of the Government’s 10-year drug strategy.
OHID has published prevalence estimates for opiate and crack use which can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/opiate-and-crack-cocaine-use-prevalence-estimates
This includes an estimate that there were 71,749 women who were dependent on these drugs in 2019/20, a rate of 4.01 per thousand women. Alcohol prevalence figures are not broken down by sex but can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/alcohol-dependence-prevalence-in-england
The latest publicly available adult substance misuse treatment statistics for England can be found at the following link:
The publication indicates there were 94,135 women in contact with drug and alcohol services between 1 April 2021 and 31 March 2022. Out of these women, 38,736 were in treatment for opiate use, 9,761 were in treatment for non-opiate use only, 10,299 were in treatment for non-opiate and alcohol use and 35,339 were in treatment for alcohol use only.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
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 young people do not transition to adult services after being discharged from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
While information on the number of children and young people discharged from mental health services, and the number subsequently referred to adult mental health services is collected by NHS England, this is not centrally validated.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time is for transition of patients from child to adult mental health services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
While information on the number of children and young people discharged from mental health services, and the number subsequently referred to adult mental health services is collected by NHS England, this is not centrally validated.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
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 young people are discharged from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services without a transition plan to adult services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The information requested is not held.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has received recent representations from (a) the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation and (b) other experts on (i) covid-19 vaccination for the prevention and treatment of long-covid and (ii) whether the covid-19 booster vaccine should be offered to people diagnosed with long covid; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is an independent group of experts who advise the Government health departments in the four nations of the United Kingdom on immunisations and the prevention of infectious disease. On 8 August 2023, the Government accepted advice from the JCVI on who should be offered vaccination in autumn 2023.
The primary aim of the COVID-19 vaccination programme remains the prevention of severe illness (hospitalisations and deaths) arising from COVID-19 rather than to treat COVID-19. They are not, therefore, currently recommended for the treatment of Post-COVID Syndrome, otherwise known as long COVID. The JCVI advice is to focus the offer of vaccination on those at greatest risk of serious disease or at high risk of transmitting the disease to vulnerable individuals. For this autumn the eligible groups for vaccination are residents and staff in a care home for older adults, all adults aged 65 years old and over, persons aged six months to 64 years old in a clinical risk group, frontline health and social care workers, persons aged 12 to 64 years old who are household contacts and persons aged 16 to 64 years old who are carers.
The clinical risk groups for COVID-19 vaccination are defined in the UK Health Security Agency’s ‘Green Book’ on vaccines and immunisation Chapter 14a tables 3 and 4. Post-COVID Syndrome is not currently identified by the JCVI as one of these conditions. The JCVI considered post-COVID syndromes when developing advice for autumn 2023. It concluded that case-control studies have provided more robust data than the initial cohort studies, but the high prevalence of the reported persistent symptoms among cases and controls complicates any firm attribution of causality to the initial SARS-CoV-2 infection. Until better data is available, the impact of vaccination on the risk, progression, and outcome of post-COVID syndromes remains difficult to assess or quantify objectively. This has been the only recent advice received from JCVI on long COVID.
To support individuals with long COVID, NHS England has set out a long COVID action plan, including establishing a nationwide network of specialist clinics. Anyone who is concerned about ongoing symptoms following COVID-19 can find information and advice on the ‘NHS Your COVID Recovery’ website.
The JCVI will continue to review evidence and will provide further advice regarding future vaccination programmes in due course.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 8 September 2023 to Question 196282 on Prescriptions: Fees and Charges, what figures his Department used to determine that prescription charge revenue offsets for the costs of administering and enforcing the system.
Answered by Will Quince
The Prescription Exemption Checking Service (PECS) is delivered by NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA); the role of the scheme administrator is to run and operate the service as commissioned by NHS England. Included within PECS is an enforcement service. NHSBSA investigate a random sample of prescription forms from patients who have claimed exemption from payment to verify the accuracy of the exemption declared. For 2022/23, the administration cost of the PECS at the NHSBSA was £8,918,498. For the same period, the charges recovered by the service totalled £10,354,816.
The total cost of prescription services includes funding through different routes, some services are shared with other NHSBSA functions, and some costs are incurred by other organisations. It is not therefore possible to provide total costs. Revenue from prescription charges and pre-payment certificates was £651,964,000 in 2021/22.