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 potential impact of the annual pension contribution cap has had on retention and recruitment of staff in the NHS.
Answered by Edward Argar
In 2020, the Government increased thresholds by £90,000 to remove all staff with threshold income below £200,000 from scope of the tapered annual allowance. An estimated 96% of general practitioners and 98% of consultants are out of scope of the taper based on National Health Service earnings.
An individual may choose to reduce their working hours or take early retirement for a range of reasons. The Department monitors retirement patterns and hours worked by senior doctors. NHS Digital’s workforce statistics show the participation rate, or average contracted hours per person, for consultants has been stable for several years. Data from the NHS Business Services Authority shows that while the number of consultants taking voluntary early retirement as a proportion of all consultant retirements has increased since 2012, it has not changed significantly in more recent years.
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 planning to take to help increase the number of therapists trained in dialectic behavioural therapy working in the NHS.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out an ambition to expand community mental health services for adults, including increasing access to evidence-based psychological therapies for people with severe mental health problems, such as dialectical behaviour therapy. A national curriculum has been developed for training additional National Health Service staff and an England-wide training programme has been established. To date, 325 staff have entered this two-year programme. Health Education England will continue to commission this training to expand access to dialectic therapy in NHS-commissioned services.
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 planning to take to help improve access to dialectic behavioural therapy through the NHS.
Answered by Gillian Keegan
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out an ambition to expand community mental health services for adults, including increasing access to evidence-based psychological therapies for people with severe mental health problems, such as dialectical behaviour therapy. A national curriculum has been developed for training additional National Health Service staff and an England-wide training programme has been established. To date, 325 staff have entered this two-year programme. Health Education England will continue to commission this training to expand access to dialectic therapy in NHS-commissioned services.
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, excluding those still in training, there were per head of population in England (a) in each year since 2015 and (b) to date in 2022.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The information is not held in the format requested.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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
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.