Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of (a) trends in levels of (i) stress and (ii) burnout and (b) the potential impact of these on mental health.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Whilst no such assessment has been made, we are investing at least an additional £2.3 billion a year as part of the NHS Long Term Plan, to expand and transform National Health Service mental health services by 2023/24, compared to 2018/19. This will allow an extra two million people to get the NHS-funded mental health support they need.
NHS Talking Therapies, formerly the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme, began in 2008 and has been expanding ever since, with over one million people now accessing NHS Talking Therapies services each year, and national waiting time standards consistently being delivered. NHS Talking Therapies offer National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved psychological and talking therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, to help with common mental health problems like stress, anxiety and depression. People can self-refer directly to an NHS Talking Therapies service, or their general practice can refer them.
The Spring Budget 2023 contained a package of over £400 million to support the long-term sick and disabled to remain in, or enter, employment. This includes approximately £200 million for digital mental health, to modernise NHS Talking Therapies services in England, provide free access to wellness and clinical mental health apps to the population, and pilot cutting edge digital therapies.
The Autumn Statement in 2023 announced £592 million of new funding to continue the expansion of NHS Talking Therapies over the next five years. The funding is intended to both increase the number of people who can access the service by 384,000 over the next five years, and increase the average number of therapy sessions each person can access, to improve quality and outcomes. This will be underpinned by recruitment and retention initiatives to ensure sufficient capacity and skills mix in the NHS Talking Therapies workforce.
Access to good occupational health services is incredibly important, and NHS England published a strategy to grow occupational health and wellbeing, setting out a roadmap for the NHS and partners over the next five years to develop and invest in occupational health and wellbeing services.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to increase the capacity of overnight accommodation for parents with babies on neonatal units.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
In March 2023, NHS England published its three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services. This sets out how the National Health Service will make maternity and neonatal care more equitable, as well as safer, and more personalised. Parents are partners in their baby’s care in the neonatal unit, and all providers are expected to ensure that facilities will be available to support family-centred care including access to parent accommodation, which will encompass co-bedding where appropriate, for all families.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to improve (a) diagnosis and (b) outcomes for people with glioblastomas.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Government is committed to improving the survival rates for all cancers. The Department and NHS England are working on implementing interventions to diagnose cancer early. When cancer is diagnosed early, there are often more curative treatment options, and this is associated with better survival.
The Government is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlogs in elective care and plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment activity.
To find and diagnose all cancers earlier, NHS England is streamlining cancer pathways to support diagnosis within 28 days. This is supported by the roll-out of 150 community diagnostic centres so far to increase capacity for diagnostic tests, with capacity prioritised for cancer diagnostics.
In May 2018, the Government announced £40 million of funding for brain tumour research as part of the Tessa Jowell Brain Cancer Mission through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). This includes research into glioblastoma. NIHR has funded four projects into glioblastoma research since financial year 2018, with a combined total funding value of £2.7 million.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much her Department plans to allocate to the Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and HIV Innovation Fund in the 2024-25 financial year.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and HIV Innovation Fund is a competitive grant scheme first started by Public Health England (PHE) which aimed to encourage local innovation to reduce the impact of HIV and improve sexual and reproductive health in England, with the first four cohorts addressing HIV only. The following table outlines the funding received for the seven cohorts which have taken place since the scheme began:
Year | Funding (£) |
2015/2016 (Cohort 1) | 501,463 |
2016/2017 (Cohort 2) | 629,844 |
2017/2018 (Cohort 3) | 574,030 |
2018/2019 (Cohort 4) | 603,418 |
2019/2020 (Cohort 5) | 605,102 |
2020/2021 (Cohort 6) | 301,764 |
2021/2022 (Cohort 7) | 290,129 |
Funding was paused for 2022/2023 to allow for the publication of an independent review. In January 2023, Ipsos Mori published the findings from an overarching independent impact evaluation of the Innovation Fund which is available at the following link:
No funding was provided for 2023/2024, and a decision has not yet been made regarding funding for 2024/2025.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much her Department has allocated to the Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and HIV Innovation Fund in the 2023-24 financial year.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and HIV Innovation Fund is a competitive grant scheme first started by Public Health England (PHE) which aimed to encourage local innovation to reduce the impact of HIV and improve sexual and reproductive health in England, with the first four cohorts addressing HIV only. The following table outlines the funding received for the seven cohorts which have taken place since the scheme began:
Year | Funding (£) |
2015/2016 (Cohort 1) | 501,463 |
2016/2017 (Cohort 2) | 629,844 |
2017/2018 (Cohort 3) | 574,030 |
2018/2019 (Cohort 4) | 603,418 |
2019/2020 (Cohort 5) | 605,102 |
2020/2021 (Cohort 6) | 301,764 |
2021/2022 (Cohort 7) | 290,129 |
Funding was paused for 2022/2023 to allow for the publication of an independent review. In January 2023, Ipsos Mori published the findings from an overarching independent impact evaluation of the Innovation Fund which is available at the following link:
No funding was provided for 2023/2024, and a decision has not yet been made regarding funding for 2024/2025.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much her Department has provided for the HIV Innovation Fund in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and HIV Innovation Fund is a competitive grant scheme first started by Public Health England (PHE) which aimed to encourage local innovation to reduce the impact of HIV and improve sexual and reproductive health in England, with the first four cohorts addressing HIV only. The following table outlines the funding received for the seven cohorts which have taken place since the scheme began:
Year | Funding (£) |
2015/2016 (Cohort 1) | 501,463 |
2016/2017 (Cohort 2) | 629,844 |
2017/2018 (Cohort 3) | 574,030 |
2018/2019 (Cohort 4) | 603,418 |
2019/2020 (Cohort 5) | 605,102 |
2020/2021 (Cohort 6) | 301,764 |
2021/2022 (Cohort 7) | 290,129 |
Funding was paused for 2022/2023 to allow for the publication of an independent review. In January 2023, Ipsos Mori published the findings from an overarching independent impact evaluation of the Innovation Fund which is available at the following link:
No funding was provided for 2023/2024, and a decision has not yet been made regarding funding for 2024/2025.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the findings were of the independent review of the impact of the Sexual Health, Reproductive Health and HIV Innovation Fund.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Reproductive Health, Sexual Health and HIV Innovation Fund is a competitive grant scheme first started by Public Health England (PHE) which aimed to encourage local innovation to reduce the impact of HIV and improve sexual and reproductive health in England, with the first four cohorts addressing HIV only. The following table outlines the funding received for the seven cohorts which have taken place since the scheme began:
Year | Funding (£) |
2015/2016 (Cohort 1) | 501,463 |
2016/2017 (Cohort 2) | 629,844 |
2017/2018 (Cohort 3) | 574,030 |
2018/2019 (Cohort 4) | 603,418 |
2019/2020 (Cohort 5) | 605,102 |
2020/2021 (Cohort 6) | 301,764 |
2021/2022 (Cohort 7) | 290,129 |
Funding was paused for 2022/2023 to allow for the publication of an independent review. In January 2023, Ipsos Mori published the findings from an overarching independent impact evaluation of the Innovation Fund which is available at the following link:
No funding was provided for 2023/2024, and a decision has not yet been made regarding funding for 2024/2025.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of the finding on p.134 of the Chief Medical Officer’s annual report, published on 10 November 2023, that deaths due to alcohol-related liver disease increased 87% between 2001 and 2021.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Department has an existing agenda to tackle alcohol harms, including alcohol-related liver disease (ARLD). Continued alcohol consumption is the main risk for dying of ARLD. However, damage to a person’s liver can be effectively halted if it is identified early and there is an intervention to change the course of their disease. The most effective way to prevent ARLD is drinking within the United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers’ low-risk drinking guidelines, namely under 14 units per week.
The Department is supporting people who drink above low-risk levels to reduce their alcohol consumption, by encouraging substitution of standard-strength drinks with no- and low-alcohol alternatives. The Department’s consultation on updating labelling guidance for no- and low-alcohol alternatives closed on 23 November 2023 and a response will be published in due course.
As part of the NHS Health Check, information on alcohol consumption is provided to support people to make healthier choices. NHS Health Check guidance recommends that those identified to be drinking at higher-risk levels are referred for liver investigation.
The Department is also supporting people with alcohol dependency through the Drug Strategy and NHS Long Term Plan by facilitating more people in need of treatment into local authority commissioned alcohol treatment services. Additional treatment and recovery funding, made available through the Drug Strategy, can also be used to increase capacity for screening for liver fibrosis in treatment settings and to establish effective referral pathways into treatment for liver disease.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to paragraph 4.3 of the Government response to the Fifty-fourth report of Session 2022-23 from the Committee of Public Accounts on Alcohol treatment services, HC 1001, published on 21 July 2023, what steps her Department has taken to identify opportunities to share best practice of alcohol treatment in local areas.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) published a toolkit for local authorities in August 2023 to help local authorities compare treatment numbers to their estimated dependent populations and identify whether specific referral pathways need strengthening. The toolkit also contains guidance on good practice to reduce the level of unmet need and target priority or underserved groups.
Alongside the toolkit, two case studies were published on how local areas have taken successful action to reduce unmet need for alcohol treatment.
The toolkit is available to local commissioners and service providers in the restricted area of the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System website and has been accessed approximately 2,000 times each month since its launch. OHID continues to develop the toolkit report by adding components, including support for local authorities to improve pathways from the criminal justice system.
Other steps taken by OHID to support system improvement and the sharing of local best-practice include regional events and working groups for commissioners and service providers.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to paragraph 5.3 of the Government response to the Fifty-fourth report of Session 2022-23 from the Committee of Public Accounts on Alcohol treatment services, HC 1001, published on 21 July 2023, what progress her Department has made on its toolkit for local authorities.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) published a toolkit for local authorities in August 2023 to help local authorities compare treatment numbers to their estimated dependent populations and identify whether specific referral pathways need strengthening. The toolkit also contains guidance on good practice to reduce the level of unmet need and target priority or underserved groups.
Alongside the toolkit, two case studies were published on how local areas have taken successful action to reduce unmet need for alcohol treatment.
The toolkit is available to local commissioners and service providers in the restricted area of the National Drug Treatment Monitoring System website and has been accessed approximately 2,000 times each month since its launch. OHID continues to develop the toolkit report by adding components, including support for local authorities to improve pathways from the criminal justice system.
Other steps taken by OHID to support system improvement and the sharing of local best-practice include regional events and working groups for commissioners and service providers.