Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department takes to help ensure that providers of abortion medications are held accountable for sending abortion pills to women outside the legal conditions.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
All independent sector services wishing to perform termination of pregnancy must be approved by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and be registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) before they are able to provide abortion services. The CQC inspect independent sector abortion services. If a CQC inspection identifies instances of non-compliance, then appropriate regulatory action will be taken.
The Regulations require registered medical professionals to certify in ‘good faith’ that the gestation period is below 10 weeks if the doctor terminating the pregnancy prescribes the abortion pills from their home, or if one or both pills for early medical abortion are to be taken by the pregnant woman at her home. This certification must be recorded on form EMA1 or a similar certificate and must be kept for three years from the date on which the medicine for the treatment of the pregnancy is prescribed.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason his Department has removed health impairment as a head of impairment in fitness to practice proceedings before professional regulatory tribunals.
Answered by Will Quince
The Government response to the 2021 policy consultation ‘Regulating healthcare professionals, protecting the public’ confirmed its commitment to introducing two consistent grounds for action for all healthcare professional regulators. This will provide clarity to the public, registrants, and regulators on the circumstances in which fitness to practise action can be taken. The proposed ground for action, ‘inability to provide care to a sufficient standard’, will include health concerns that have impacted or may impact a registrant’s ability to practise safely. It will ensure that regulators’ fitness to practise investigations into health matters focus on whether a health condition impairs the professional to the extent that they cannot provide care to a sufficient standard, rather than requiring regulatory action in matters which do not impede safe practise.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 March 2023 to Question 169238 on Department of Health and Social Care: Procurement, how many times operators have (a) confirmed that there has been any instance of grave professional misconduct which could render its integrity questionable and (b) been excluded from a contract procurement as a result of that misconduct since 2016; and if he will list those prospective operators.
Answered by Will Quince
There is no record on the Department’s current procurement and contracts database, which holds information going back to June 2020, of bidders declaring they have been in receipt of enforcement or remedial orders in relation to grave professional misconduct. Information from the standard Selection Questionnaires bidders are required to complete prior to June 2020 is held on archived database systems, and retrieving this information would involve manual searches which would exceed the disproportionate cost threshold.
The question concerning grave professional misconduct appears on the standard Selection Questionnaire bidders are required to complete and is used for all procurement exercises above the relevant threshold, including where suppliers are based outside of the United Kingdom.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 March 2023 to Question 169238 on Department of Health and Social Care: Procurement, whether this includes cases where the jurisdiction in which the grave misconduct occurred included jurisdictions outside the UK.
Answered by Will Quince
There is no record on the Department’s current procurement and contracts database, which holds information going back to June 2020, of bidders declaring they have been in receipt of enforcement or remedial orders in relation to grave professional misconduct. Information from the standard Selection Questionnaires bidders are required to complete prior to June 2020 is held on archived database systems, and retrieving this information would involve manual searches which would exceed the disproportionate cost threshold.
The question concerning grave professional misconduct appears on the standard Selection Questionnaire bidders are required to complete and is used for all procurement exercises above the relevant threshold, including where suppliers are based outside of the United Kingdom.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 March 2023 to Question 169238 on Department of Health and Social Care: Procurement, whether his Department plans to make assessments under regulation 57(8)(g) for ongoing procurement for the NHS’ Federated Data Platform contract.
Answered by Will Quince
NHS England is the contracting authority for the Federated Data Platform procurement. NHS England intends to apply the mandatory and discretionary exclusion criteria in regulation 57 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 as required by and in accordance with law in relation to the procurement, and accordingly intends to make the assessments to which the question refers.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 April 2023 to Question 179995, if he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the waiting time for appointments at the oncology department of Royal Shrewsbury Hospital.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have no current plans to make a specific assessment. NHS England assesses the effectiveness of trust waiting time recovery plans, and publishes provider-based cancer waiting times data. Provisional data for February 2023 shows that 86.7% of patients with symptoms that might indicate cancer, who were given an urgent referral by their general practitioner to The Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust, were given an appointment with a consultant within two weeks of their urgent referral by the trust. This is an improvement from 75.5% in February 2022.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the (a) source of sub-standard pork in the food chain; (b) type and (c) level of resulting contamination.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
All pork meat sold in the United Kingdom should originate from either approved slaughterhouses or from imported meat that has entered the UK through approved channels.
The Food Standards Agency is present in all pig abattoirs in England and Wales, where every pig slaughtered is subject to ante and post-mortem inspection and responds to food safety incidents and foodborne outbreaks, working with local authorities and industry to remove from the market products that are not in compliance with safety legislation.
In the most recent full reporting year, 2021/22, 46 incidents and outbreaks involving pork and pork products were reported to the Agency and removed from the market, most of these due to contamination with Salmonella.
The Food Standards Agency works with Port Health Authorities and the Animal and Plant Health Agency to apply controls at border control posts. The levels of non-compliance identified in relation to imported pork products remain low. Between 1 January 2022 and the present, six consignments of pork from non-EU countries have been rejected.
In addition to these controls on Rest of World imports, recent surveillance at the UK border and at retail premises on EU imports has identified some pork meat products that did not meet the UK import requirements and these incidents have been resolved through recall and removal from the market.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
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 impact of the Hospitals Transformation Programme on ambulance delays for heart attack and stroke patients in Shropshire.
Answered by Will Quince
Plans for the Hospitals Transformation Programme will provide a new consolidated Emergency Department at the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. Cardiology and acute stroke services will be co-located with the Emergency Department, ensuring immediate access to relevant specialties. As set out in the ‘Transforming the Royal Shrewsbury Hospital and Princess Royal Hospital: Strategic Outline Case’, the Trust expects this change to significantly reduce delayed ambulance handovers. As now, patients indicating an acute heart attack will continue to be taken to the specialist heart attack centres at New Cross Hospital (Wolverhampton) and Royal Stoke Hospital.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
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 adequacy of the waiting time for appointments at the oncology department of Shrewsbury Royal Hospital.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No specific assessment has been made.
Asked by: Daniel Kawczynski (Conservative - Shrewsbury and Atcham)
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 financially support pharmacies.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework: 2019 to 2024 five-year deal commits £2.592 billion per year to community pharmacies. In September last year we announced the agreement with the sector for the remainder of the five-year deal, which included a further one-off investment in the sector of £100 million. The Pharmacy Access Scheme financially supports pharmacies in areas where there are fewer pharmacies.