Dan Poulter: DHSC: Written Answers (379)

Written Question

General Practitioners

Wednesday 6th April 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent general practitioners in England excluding those still in training (a) there were in each year since 2015 and (b) there are in 2022 to date.

Answered by Maria Caulfield

The following table shows all full-time equivalent (FTE) general practitioners (GPs), excluding GPs in training grade from September 2015 to September 2021, the most recent comparable data available.

September 2015	29,364
September 2016	29,474
September 2017	29,129
September 2018	28,489
September 2019	28,182
September 2020	27,939
September 2021	27,920

Source:

General Practice Workforce, 31 December 2021 NHS Digital

Notes:

FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In GPs in Training Grade contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours for consistency. It is not recommended that comparisons be made between quarterly or monthly figures due to the unknown effect of seasonality on workforce numbers.
Figures shown do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.
Data includes estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid staff records. The percentage of FTE that is estimated is presented for each staff group, and includes full and partial estimates.
Full Estimation: Estimates are made for both headcount and FTE for those practices which did not provide any valid data for one or more of the four staff groups (or in the case of practices providing no valid direct patient care staff data, estimates are only made for those practices also failing to provide valid data for at least one other staff group). The absence of data for a staff group could be due to poor data quality or no submitted data. For these practices, clinical commissioning group-level estimations are made.
Partial Estimation: In some cases, practices provide valid records about their staff but do not include information about their working hours. In these cases, the record is retained and estimates calculated for their working hours and full-time equivalence based upon the national averages for the job role. These figures are referred to as ‘partial estimates’ and the scale of these estimates varies by staff group.

Written Question

Members: Correspondence

Tuesday 22nd March 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the length of time taken by his Department to respond to correspondence from hon Members.

Answered by Edward Argar

The Government attaches great importance to the effective and timely handling of correspondence from hon. Members, either directly or on behalf of their constituents. There has been a high degree of parliamentary interest on delays in response times both to correspondence and written questions across Government, but in particular the Department of Health and Social Care. The Procedure Committee is monitoring the Department’s performance.

We are doing our utmost to reduce the backlog of 3,500 overdue ministerial cases.

Data on the timeliness of responses to correspondence from Parliamentarians is published on GOV.UK, which is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/data-on-responses-to-correspondence-from-mps-and-peers

Data for 2021 will be published by the Cabinet Office in due course.

Written Question

NHS Foundation Trusts: Nurses

Tuesday 1st March 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent nurses are employed by all NHS Foundation Trusts in England in each year since 2009-10.

Answered by Edward Argar

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care or in general practice surgeries, local authorities or other providers. The following table shows the number of full time equivalent (FTE) nurses employed by a National Health Service trust with foundation trust status in England in September of each year from 2009 to 2021.

September 2009	112,518
September 2010	120,092
September 2011	130,702
September 2012	150,284
September 2013	157,257
September 2014	161,210
September 2015	171,506
September 2016	178,592
September 2017	180,629
September 2018	185,061
September 2019	192,742
September 2020	203,949
September 2021	212,922

Source: NHS Digital Workforce Statistics

Note:

The total number of FTE nurses does not match the total numbers of FTE nurses in all NHS trusts and CCGs published by NHS Digital. Not all NHS trusts are or have always held foundation trust status. Nurses employed in NHS trusts which did not hold foundation trust status at the point of data collection but later became foundation trusts because of a merger, are not included until after the trust they are employed in gained foundation trust status.

Written Question

Mental Health Services

Tuesday 15th February 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

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 effect of the delays in the publication of the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics on the ability of relevant stakeholders to understand the experience of people living with mental illness.

Answered by Gillian Keegan

There was a pre-announced delay of two weeks from 13 January to 27 January 2022 for publication of the January provisional Mental Health Services Data Set (MHSDS). This publication was the first one to be based on a new version of the dataset, which involved mental health providers collecting new information and NHS Digital developing its system to process this. Delays in this development led to the two-week postponement of the provisional publication. NHS Digital has confirmed that as the development has now concluded, standard monthly publication processes have resumed, and the February MHSDS was published on 10 February 2022 as scheduled.

No such assessment has been made regarding the effect of the delays in the publication of the Mental Health Services Monthly Statistics. The timeliness of this publication remains a priority and key learning and improvements have been identified from this project which will be used to implement future dataset version changes.

Written Question

Mental Health Services

Tuesday 15th February 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

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 tackle delays in the publication of the Mental Health Services monthly statistics.

Answered by Gillian Keegan

Written Question

Hospitals: Agency Workers

Monday 14th February 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to Answer of 21 October 2021 to Question 56966 on NHS: Agency Workers, what the total cost to NHS hospitals has been of using (a) agency staff and (b) bank staff (i) in the financial year 2020-21 and (ii) since 1 April 2021.

Answered by Edward Argar

Total costs for bank and agency staff for 2020-21 and year to date for 2021-22 are not available.

Written Question

West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust: Nurses

Monday 24th January 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent nurses are employed by West Suffolk Foundation Trust, and its predecessor trusts, in each year since 2009-10.

Answered by Edward Argar

NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services workforce statistics. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care or in general practice surgeries, local authorities or other providers.

The following table shows the number of full time equivalent nurses employed by West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust in each year from September 2009 to September 2021.

September 2009	596
September 2010	609
September 2011	612
September 2012	630
September 2013	670
September 2014	683
September 2015	732
September 2016	759
September 2017	758
September 2018	798
September 2019	877
September 2020	963
September 2021	1,009

Written Question

East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation NHS Foundation Trust: Nurses

Monday 24th January 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent nurses are employed by East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust, and its predecessor trusts, in each year since 2009-10.

Answered by Edward Argar

In July 2018, Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust merged with Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust to form East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust. The following table shows the number of full time equivalent (FTE) nurses employed by Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust and Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust from September 2009 to September 2017.

	Ipswich Hospital NHS Trust	Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust	Total
September 2009	868	833	1,701
September 2010	873	857	1,729
September 2011	865	872	1,737
September 2012	836	903	1,739
September 2013	850	961	1,811
September 2014	872	949	1,821
September 2015	905	1,017	1,923
September 2016	981	964	1,944
September 2017	1,010	940	1,950

The following table shows the number of FTE nurses employed by East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust from September 2018 to September 2021.

September 2018	2,208
September 2019	2,325
September 2020	2,415
September 2021	2,644

Written Question

Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: Nurses

Monday 24th January 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent nurses are employed by Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation, and its predecessor trusts, in each year since 2009-10.

Answered by Edward Argar

The following table shows the number of full time equivalent nurses employed by Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in September of each year between 2009 and 2021.

September 2009	1,489
September 2010	1,581
September 2011	1,603
September 2012	1,604
September 2013	1,655
September 2014	1,673
September 2015	1,680
September 2016	1,683
September 2017	1,804
September 2018	1,838
September 2019	1,934
September 2020	2,102
September 2021	2,094

Note:

The data is sourced from NHS Digital’s NHS HCHS workforce statistics. Data on the National Health Service workforce is drawn from the Electronic Staff Record (ESR). The ESR is the HR and payroll system for the NHS.

Written Question

Nurses: East of England

Monday 24th January 2022

Asked by: Dan Poulter (Labour - Central Suffolk and North Ipswich)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full time equivalent nurses are employed by all NHS trusts in the East of England in each year since 2009-10.

Answered by Edward Argar

The following table shows the number of full time equivalent nurses employed by all National Health Service trusts in the East of England in each year from September 2009 to September 2021.

September 2009	25,276
September 2010	25,721
September 2011	25,693
September 2012	24,470
September 2013	24,280
September 2014	24,528
September 2015	24,374
September 2016	25,228
September 2017	25,199
September 2018	25,524
September 2019	26,673
September 2020	28,112
September 2021	29,290