Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS Long Term Plan, what steps he (a) is taking and (b) plans to take to meet the target that 50 per cent of people taking part in clinical trials are teenagers and young adults by 2025.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) is committed to the involvement, engagement and participation of children and young people (CYP) in all relevant research, supporting researchers and funders, as well as empowering children and young people to lead their own journey with research.
The NIHR is working with NHS England, cancer charities, teenage and young adult cancer patients, and clinicians towards meeting this NHS Long Term Plan commitment relating to CYP with cancer.
The NIHR Clinical Research Network has held two summits. The first summit, held in 2017, developed a clear strategy. The second summit, held in April this year, focused on ensuring that the strategy’s objectives were still fit for purpose, and that the right stakeholders were engaged to ensure successful delivery. The NIHR Clinical Research Network is now funding a dedicated teenage and young adult cancer research nurse in each of its 15 Local Clinical Research Networks, with posts made available from 1 April 2019.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking with women who are transitioning to men to (a) inform them about and (b) screen them for the risk of contracting breast cancer.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
In July 2017, Public Health England published a leaflet for people who are transgender or non-binary to help provide information about National Health Service population screening programmes that are available. This leaflet is available at the following link:
The leaflet helps ensure that trans people can access the screening that is most appropriate for them. The leaflet also outlines who the NHS screening programmes invite for breast screening, bowel cancer, cervical screening and abdominal aortic aneurysm screening and includes important information about all four screening programmes as well as how to access additional support and advice.
Routine breast screening is available to both trans men and trans women. It is important that to access this offer, trans men and women are registered at their general practice as a female. A trans man, if registered with their general practitioner (GP) as a man, can still access breast screening if they talk to their GP to arrange a referral. This guidance can be viewed at page six of the guidance available at the following link:
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department's Green Paper on Prevention is better than cure will include the role of (a) employers in supporting good health and (b) use of health insurance by employers to support the health of their staff.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
We are considering a number of policy options for the Prevention Green Paper and will be mindful of the role of employers in supporting their employees’ health.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
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 with the NHS to tackle the cost of fraud to the NHS.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
To tackle the cost of fraud to the National Health Service, the Department has published and is implementing a counter-fraud strategic plan for the healthcare sector covering 2017-20. The plan includes:
- Establishing the NHS Counter Fraud Authority;
- Developing a coherent intelligence-led approach to enable the identification, prioritisation and management of fraud risk;
- Collaborative working to deliver a comprehensive programme of fraud prevention, deterrence and enforcement activities and loss recovery in the highest risk areas; and
- Strengthening counter-fraud capability with an increased emphasis on permanently preventing future losses.
As highlighted in the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS Improvement is supporting the NHS to deliver the opportunities for improvement in procurement, including efficiency savings by aggregation of volumes and standardising specifications. A new centralised NHS procurement organisation, Supply Chain Coordination Limited (SCCL), has been introduced to help use this purchasing power on a national scale to get the best deals and deliver high quality affordable care for patients. By 2022, we will double the volume of products bought through SCCL to 80%, extend the number of nationally contracted products and consolidate the way local and regional procurement teams operate.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
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 (a) performance of the procurement process in the NHS and (b) susceptibility of that process to procurement fraud.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
To tackle the cost of fraud to the National Health Service, the Department has published and is implementing a counter-fraud strategic plan for the healthcare sector covering 2017-20. The plan includes:
- Establishing the NHS Counter Fraud Authority;
- Developing a coherent intelligence-led approach to enable the identification, prioritisation and management of fraud risk;
- Collaborative working to deliver a comprehensive programme of fraud prevention, deterrence and enforcement activities and loss recovery in the highest risk areas; and
- Strengthening counter-fraud capability with an increased emphasis on permanently preventing future losses.
As highlighted in the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS Improvement is supporting the NHS to deliver the opportunities for improvement in procurement, including efficiency savings by aggregation of volumes and standardising specifications. A new centralised NHS procurement organisation, Supply Chain Coordination Limited (SCCL), has been introduced to help use this purchasing power on a national scale to get the best deals and deliver high quality affordable care for patients. By 2022, we will double the volume of products bought through SCCL to 80%, extend the number of nationally contracted products and consolidate the way local and regional procurement teams operate.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
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 consult (a) the third sector and (b) patient groups in the development of the (a) workforce implementation plan and (b) implementation framework for the NHS Long-Term Plan.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The National Implementation Framework, to be published in the spring, will support local areas as they develop their implementation plans. Local implementation plans will provide staff, patients, the public and other stakeholders with the opportunity to help local organisations determine how to achieve the service and outcomes improvements set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.
NHS England is asking local health systems to start this engagement soon and expect local politicians to have an opportunity to be involved in this, as well as other local stakeholders, local partners, communities, service users and patients.
Nationally, the National Health Service is working with Healthwatch England and the Voluntary and Community Sector Health and Wellbeing Alliance to provide additional support to local systems in their engagement with local communities.
The Chair of NHS Improvement, Baroness Harding, has been asked by the Prime Minister and Secretary of State to take forward the development of a workforce implementation plan, as part of the overall implementation plan for the Long Term Plan. This programme of work will engage with staff, employers, professional organisations, trade unions and think tanks to build a shared vision and a plan of action that puts NHS people at the heart of NHS policy and delivery.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to publish the National Cancer Advisory Group’s annual progress report on the Cancer Strategy.
Answered by Steve Brine
The National Cancer Advisory Group prepared a progress statement in autumn 2018 which was shared with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and Chief Executives of the arm’s length bodies, as recommended by the Independent Cancer Taskforce.
The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, built on the Independent Cancer Taskforce’s strategy and the extensive transformation work already underway around the country. NHS England will publish a report on progress in the cancer programme to date, alongside further detail on the implementation of the cancer objectives in the NHS Long Term Plan in spring 2019.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
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 ensure that the forthcoming NHS workforce implementation plan will ensure that staffing numbers are at the level needed to achieve the Government’s target to diagnose 75 per cent of cancers at an early stage by 2028.
Answered by Steve Brine
My Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has commissioned Baroness Dido Harding, working closely with Sir David Behan, to lead a number of programmes to engage with key National Health Service interests to develop a detailed workforce implementation plan. These programmes will consider detailed proposals to grow the workforce rapidly, including staff working on cancer, consider additional staff and skills required, build a supportive working culture in the NHS and ensure first rate leadership for NHS staff.
Asked by: Craig Tracey (Conservative - North Warwickshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the NHS Long-Term Plan will ensure that every patient with secondary breast cancer has access to a tailored health and wellbeing event that includes psychological support and opportunities to meet other people with secondary breast cancer.
Answered by Steve Brine
We are committed to rolling out the recovery package to every cancer patient by 2020. The recovery package is a set of four interventions designed to help patients and clinicians assess a patient’s holistic needs and plan appropriately for their care and support, and includes a health and wellbeing event – or similar – empowering patients to independently manage their own health, with advice and support.
The National Health Service Long Term Plan provides an excellent opportunity to look at how cancer and other services can be further improved over the next decade. The plan is currently in development and will be published later in the year.