Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve access to (a) ear wax removal services and (b) hearing test appointments on the NHS.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning ear wax removal and audiology services that meet the needs of their local populations, taking account of relevant national guidance and local service arrangements.
NHS England is supporting ICBs and provider organisations to improve performance and reduce waiting lists for appointments and assessments for hearing services. This includes capital investment to upgrade audiology facilities in National Health Service trusts, expanding audiology testing capacity via community diagnostic centres, and direct support through a national audiology improvement collaborative.
Further, through the Medium Term Planning Framework, we have set a clear target for systems to reduce long waits for community health services. By 2028/29 at least 80% of community health services activity should take place within 18 weeks, including community audiology activity.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help reduce NHS waiting lists for transgender healthcare.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
We recognise that waiting lists for specialist gender services are too long. This has been caused by multiple factors, including unprecedented demand for gender services and a shortage of specialist clinical staff to meet the rapidly rising demand.
This is why NHS England is working to open new services for both children and young people and adults.
In line with the findings and recommendations of the Cass Review, NHS England has opened three new services in the North West, London, and the South West that offer a fundamentally different clinical model, embedding multi-disciplinary teams in specialist children’s hospitals. A fourth service is anticipated to open in the East of England shortly and NHS England is aiming to deliver service provision in each region of England by the end of 2026/27.
For adults, NHS England has also increased the number of gender dysphoria clinics in England from seven to 12, with the rollout of five new adult gender clinics since July 2020.
We are also working closely with NHS England to implement the findings from the Review of adult gender dysphoria clinics, chaired by Dr David Levy. This includes creating a single, national waiting list that will help effectively manage the wider waiting lists and end the disparity in wait times between the adult gender dysphoria clinics.
We recognise the negative impact long waiting times can have on mental health. This is why the Department has commissioned a pilot to support patients on the waiting list for the Adult Gender Service in the South West of England. This pilot launched on 7 April. We will evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot in due course.
Separate to this, through implementation of the NHS Adult Gender Services Review that was chaired by Dr David Levy, NHS England is working to develop further waiting-well pilots to provide support to patients, including mental health access and self-management resources.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to improve the provision of addiction treatment in prisons.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
Over the last 18 months, NHS England has been taking active steps to improve drug and alcohol services across the entire adult prison estate to address Dame Carol Black’s recommendations in her internal review and increase the provision of treatment and recovery services.
In 2025/26, we secured an additional £7 million, recurrently, to increase the provision of drug and alcohol treatment and recovery services. This funding is ringfenced to increase availability of long-acting buprenorphine, peer support, targeted psychosocial interventions delivered in Incentivised Substance Free Living wings and deliver targeted psychosocial interventions to address synthetic drug use.
Since funding was released in August 2025, every region has reported an increased offer into these key priorities, and some regions have reported a positive impact into the number of patients being under the influence.
Additionally, we have been working extensively with stakeholders across the health and justice sector, including providers, commissioners, patients, prison leaders and policy leads, to revise the national substance misuse service specification to improve consistency in design, delivery and oversight. A key change includes renaming the custodial services to Drug and Alcohol Treatment and Recovery services, aligning to community and HM Prison and Probation Service terminology and reducing stigma attached to addiction. The revised spec is progressing towards the final stages ahead of publication later this year.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve (a) recruitment and (b) retention of NHS dentists.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Secretary of State for Wales
Strengthening the workforce is key to our ambitions to rebuild National Health Service dentistry. The recruitment of dentists remains a priority, with integrated care boards continuing to be able to make use of the Golden Hello scheme to encourage dentists to work in those areas that need them most.
The 10-Year Workforce Plan will ensure the NHS has the right people in the right places, with the right skills to care for patients, when they need it. We will now make it a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practice in the NHS for a minimum period, intended to be at least three years.
We are also taking steps to increase the supply of dentists. We announced the first sustained expansion of dental school places since 2007. Backed by £11 million, a total of 50 dental school places a year have been allocated equally to the Universities of Portsmouth and East Anglia.
We are increasing the availability of ORE and LDS examinations for overseas-qualified dentists to enable an additional 2,000 dentists to join the register annually from 2028/29.
Our ambition is to deliver fundamental contract reform before the end of this Parliament, focused on matching resources to need, improving access, promoting prevention, and rewarding dentists fairly, while enabling the whole dental team to work to the top of their capability.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine’s report entitled The State of Emergency Medicine in England, what steps his Department is taking to (a) improve patient safety and (b) reduce excess deaths associated with waits of 12 hours or more in emergency departments.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to restoring urgent and emergency care waiting times to the standards set out in the NHS Constitution. The medium-term planning framework for the National Health Service published in October 2025 includes a commitment that 85% of patients wait no more than four hours in accident and emergency by 2028/29, as well as committing to reduce year on year, between 2026/27 and 2028/29, the proportion of patients who wait over 12 hours in accident and emergency.
Improving flow through emergency departments is critical to delivering the four- and 12-hour accident and emergency standards. To support this, the Government has provided £450 million of capital investment, including in new and expanded Same Day Emergency Care and Urgent Treatment Centres, additional mental health crisis capacity, and connected care records for ambulance services. In February 2026, the NHS published new national clinical standards, including The Model Emergency Department and The Model Acute Pathway, to support more consistent, high-quality care, and improve flow through hospitals.
We are committed to eradicating corridor care, and in partnership with organisations including the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, have published the first consistent national standard for corridor care. From June 2026, for the first time, NHS England is publishing monthly data on instances of corridor care, to support trusts to identify and target action to reduce it.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
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 merits of rolling out the meningitis B vaccination to all children born before 2015.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
As my Rt. Hon. Friend, the former Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, told the House on 17 March in the context of the meningococcal disease outbreak in Kent, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) has been asked to re-examine eligibility for meningitis vaccines to assess, for example, an expanded offer to older children and/or young adults. The JCVI will provide updated advice to the Department this summer around whether, and to what extent, a vaccine programme for older children and/or young adults would be clinically effective. This will also include an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of such a vaccination programme. The JCVI is required to consider the cost-effectiveness of a vaccination programme as part of their code of practice, which is available at the following link:
The JCVI gives advice to ministers based on the best evidence, reflecting current good practice and/or expert opinion. This involves a robust, transparent, and systematic appraisal of the available evidence from a wide range of sources. The JCVI aims to work with key stakeholders while maintaining the independence of committee processes and considerations.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve access to speech and language therapy for people with Primary Progressive Aphasia (PPA), particularly for people who are linguistically and ethnically diverse.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Secretary of State for Wales
The provision of dementia health care services is the responsibility of local integrated care boards (ICBs). We expect ICBs to commission services based on local population needs, taking account of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.
The Government is committed to improving care for everyone with dementia, including those with primary progressive aphasia, which is why we have funded the work of the Dementia 100: Assessment Tool Pathway programme, which brings together multiple resources into a single, consolidated tool. This will help simplify best practice for busy system leaders and will help create communities and services where the best possible care and support is available to those with dementia.
A number of experts, including those with expertise in speech and language therapy and dementia care, provided independent, desktop analysis of the tool, and this invaluable feedback was integrated into the tool. The D100: Pathway Assessment Tool can be found at the following link:
NHS England has published a guide which aims to help health and social care workers provide dementia care which corresponds to the needs and wishes of people from a wide range of ethnic groups, especially minority ethnic groups. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/intercultural-dementia-care-guide/
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve early diagnoses of Parkinson's disease.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The Department recognises the importance of a timely diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease and the impact that early identification has on people’s long‑term outcomes. We remain committed to delivering the National Health Service constitutional standard for 92% of patients waiting no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment by March 2029. We are investing in additional capacity to deliver appointments to help bring lists and waiting times down. The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, sets out the specific productivity and reform efforts needed to return to the constitutional standard.
National programmes like NHS England’s Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) support faster diagnosis by using clinically‑led, data‑driven reviews to identify delays and unwarranted variation in neurology services. GIRFT provides evidence‑based recommendations to streamline referral and outpatient pathways, improve data quality, and share best practice between NHS trusts. This helps increase specialist capacity, reduce waiting times for assessment, and ensure more timely access to diagnosis for people with suspected Parkinson’s disease.
Additionally, by delivering the shifts outlined in the 10‑Year Health Plan, we can free up specialist capacity by increasing community‑based provision, reducing administrative burden through digital tools, and supporting earlier identification and management of neurological conditions like Parkinson’s. This will allow neurologists and geriatricians to focus on more complex cases and improve diagnostic timeliness.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support research on low grade glioma brain tumours.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed
The Department invests over £1.6 billion per year in research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
The NIHR is continuing to invest in brain tumour research. In January 2026, the NIHR announced increased investment of over £25 million in the NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium. The world-leading consortium aims to transform outcomes for adults and children and their families who are living with brain tumours, ultimately reducing lives lost to cancer.
Brain tumours are one of the toughest cancers to treat. This new NIHR investment will help researchers and clinicians understand the disease better, test new treatments earlier, and make trials available to more adults and children closer to home.
The consortium brings together 48 organisations from across leading universities, National Health Service trusts and charities, along with patients, to help deliver better research, faster. It is a coordinated national effort to improve the development and evaluation of treatments for brain tumours across adult and paediatric populations.
The NIHR continues to welcome high quality funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including low-grade glioma brain tumours.
Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Friern Barnet)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of the National Cancer Plan on support for people with brain tumours.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Secretary of State for Wales
The Department recognises that there are currently limited treatment options available for people who have been diagnosed with brain tumours.
The National Cancer Plan, published on 4 February 2026, complements the 10-Year Health Plan and sets out how the National Health Service will improve outcomes for all cancer patients including those with rarer and less common cancers such as brain tumours.
Patients with rare cancers, including brain tumours, will benefit from a move to specialist multi-disciplinary teams which cover multiple providers. This will allow them to benefit from the input of specialist centres and so access to the best evidence-based care.
To meet its obligations for rare cancers, including brain tumours, the Government will appoint a new national clinical lead for rare cancers. This national clinical lead will have a clear mandate to speak up for rare cancers, and to provide clinical advice and support for the delivery of the actions in the plan.
In January 2026, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) announced increased investment of over £25 million in the NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium. The world-leading consortium aims to transform outcomes for adults and children and their families who are living with brain tumours – ultimately reducing lives lost to cancer.
In addition to speeding up diagnosis and treatment, the work being undertaken by the consortium aims to ensure that patients have access to the latest treatments and technology and to clinical trials. This will make a significant contribution to bringing the United Kingdom’s cancer survival rates back up to the standards of the best in the world.