Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
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 NHS staff have sufficient personal protective equipment to remain safe during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill
There is currently adequate national supply of personal protection equipment in line with Public Health England’s recommended usage, and the pandemic influenza stockpile has now been released. Millions more items of personal protective equipment for frontline staff have been delivered over the last few days to hospitals.
There are well-established procedures to deal with supply issues, should they arise, by working closely with industry, the National Health Service and others in the supply chain to help prevent shortages. We are constantly monitoring this and working to manage demand and secure additional stocks to further enhance our preparedness.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many unfilled NHS nursing posts there were in (a) London and (b) England in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
NHS Improvement collects vacancy data for three staff groups; doctors, nurses and ‘other staff’. These vacancy statistics are published for England and at the regional level of North, Midlands and East, London and South.
NHS Digital published the latest NHS Improvement vacancy data which can be found in the following link:
The latest statistics show that as of March 2019, there are over 39,500 nursing and midwifery vacancies in England. In London, there are over 9,300 nursing and midwifery vacancies. The majority of these are filled by bank and agency staff.
NHS Improvement and NHS Employers have been working in partnership to deliver a national programme of action to support National Health Service trusts to improve retention of the nursing and clinical workforce. This provides targeted support to trusts on key issues affecting retention, such as flexible working, supporting new starters and older workers, and development and career planning.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
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 support the recruitment and retention of nurses in (a) London and (b) England.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
Capital Nurse is a National Health Service programme with over 90 projects working to support recruitment and retention of nurses in London. The Capital Nurse vision and objective is to ‘get nursing right for London’, so that London has the right number of nurses, with the right skills in the right place, working to deliver excellent nursing wherever it is needed. The programme is jointly sponsored by Health Education England, NHS England and NHS Improvement.
NHS Improvement and NHS Employers have been working in partnership to deliver a national programme of action to support NHS trusts to improve retention of the nursing and clinical workforce. This provides targeted support to trusts on key issues affecting retention, such as flexible working, supporting new starters and older workers, and development and career planning. Trusts’ commitment has enabled a national improvement in nursing turnover rates from 12.5% to 11.9% since the beginning of the programme (June 2017).
Around 1 million NHS workers are already benefiting from the Agenda for Change (3 year) pay and contract reform deal agreed last year. The deal includes important changes to pay and non-pay benefits to help support recruitment and retention of all staff, including nurses, and boost productivity in return for additional pay investment.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it is policy to introduce a dedicated dementia fund as recommended by the Alzheimer's Society.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We have noted the recent Alzheimer’s Society report. We are committed to publishing a Green Paper on adult social care at the earliest opportunity, setting out proposals for reform. One aspect of the dementia fund proposals was related to personal health budgets. Within Universal Personalised Care, we committed to exploring possible new rights to have personal health budgets in a further five areas across 2019-20, including dementia.
We continue to work with our partners to deliver in full the Challenge on Dementia 2020, which includes commitments to improve awareness of dementia. There are now more than 2.8 million people that are dementia friends and 365 areas in England have committed to become Dementia Friendly Communities.
The Challenge on Dementia 2020 sets out the ambition for two thirds of people with dementia to receive a formal diagnosis. This has been achieved nationally. Our focus now is on reducing the variation in local diagnosis rates, and NHS England have published guidance and put programmes in place to further improve the quality and timeliness of diagnosis across the country.
Information on how much funding was spent on dementia care in Bexley, London and England is not available centrally. NHS England allocates funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which commission services on behalf of their local populations. It is for CCGs to decide how best to use the funding allocated to them in line with local healthcare needs and priorities, working with other local commissioners and organisations.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve (a) awareness and (b) diagnosis of dementia.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We have noted the recent Alzheimer’s Society report. We are committed to publishing a Green Paper on adult social care at the earliest opportunity, setting out proposals for reform. One aspect of the dementia fund proposals was related to personal health budgets. Within Universal Personalised Care, we committed to exploring possible new rights to have personal health budgets in a further five areas across 2019-20, including dementia.
We continue to work with our partners to deliver in full the Challenge on Dementia 2020, which includes commitments to improve awareness of dementia. There are now more than 2.8 million people that are dementia friends and 365 areas in England have committed to become Dementia Friendly Communities.
The Challenge on Dementia 2020 sets out the ambition for two thirds of people with dementia to receive a formal diagnosis. This has been achieved nationally. Our focus now is on reducing the variation in local diagnosis rates, and NHS England have published guidance and put programmes in place to further improve the quality and timeliness of diagnosis across the country.
Information on how much funding was spent on dementia care in Bexley, London and England is not available centrally. NHS England allocates funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which commission services on behalf of their local populations. It is for CCGs to decide how best to use the funding allocated to them in line with local healthcare needs and priorities, working with other local commissioners and organisations.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much was spent on dementia care in (a) Bexley, (b) London and (c) England in each of the last five years.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We have noted the recent Alzheimer’s Society report. We are committed to publishing a Green Paper on adult social care at the earliest opportunity, setting out proposals for reform. One aspect of the dementia fund proposals was related to personal health budgets. Within Universal Personalised Care, we committed to exploring possible new rights to have personal health budgets in a further five areas across 2019-20, including dementia.
We continue to work with our partners to deliver in full the Challenge on Dementia 2020, which includes commitments to improve awareness of dementia. There are now more than 2.8 million people that are dementia friends and 365 areas in England have committed to become Dementia Friendly Communities.
The Challenge on Dementia 2020 sets out the ambition for two thirds of people with dementia to receive a formal diagnosis. This has been achieved nationally. Our focus now is on reducing the variation in local diagnosis rates, and NHS England have published guidance and put programmes in place to further improve the quality and timeliness of diagnosis across the country.
Information on how much funding was spent on dementia care in Bexley, London and England is not available centrally. NHS England allocates funding to clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) which commission services on behalf of their local populations. It is for CCGs to decide how best to use the funding allocated to them in line with local healthcare needs and priorities, working with other local commissioners and organisations.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
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 increase early diagnosis of cancers.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
To raise awareness of cancer symptoms and encourage people with symptoms to go to their doctor without delay, the Department of Health and Social Care, alongside Public Health England, have run 15 national Be Clear on Cancer awareness campaigns since 2010/11.
A Be Clear on Cancer ‘Blood in pee’ campaign ran across England from July to September 2018, aiming to improve early diagnosis of bladder and kidney cancer. Public Health England launched a new campaign, ‘Cervical Screening Saves Lives’, on 5 March to promote uptake of cervical screening.
As recommended by the UK National Screening Committee and the independent Cancer Taskforce, we are modernising our world-renowned cancer screening programmes by introducing Faecal Immunochemical Testing into the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme as soon as possible and human papillomavirus as the primary test in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme by 2020.
NHS England is establishing Rapid Diagnostic Centres across the country to upgrade and bring together the latest diagnostic equipment and expertise. The centres build on the 10 models piloted through the Accelerate, Coordinate and Evaluate programme, which have focussed on diagnosing cancers where patients often present with non-specific symptoms and may go to their general practitioner many times before being sent for appropriate tests.
NHS England is extending lung health checks, targeting clinical commissioning groups with the lowest survival rates. In Greater Manchester introducing low dose CT health checks saw an almost five-fold reduction in stage 4 disease, with 80% of cancers diagnosed at an early stage.
NHS England awarded around £5 million of funding to improve pathology services in 37 trusts across nine Cancer Alliances at the end of 2017/18.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to reduce waiting times (a) for NHS operations and (b) between admission and treatment at A&E throughout London.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
There is significant work underway to improve waiting times both throughout London and nationally.
Locally, at Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust and wider South East London Sustainability and Transformation Partnership for example, there are several plans in place to improve accident and emergency (A&E) and elective care waiting times.
In relation to A&E, a new clinical facility at Queen Elizabeth Hospital has increased bed capacity by 44 beds; the SAFER and Red2Green programme is working to improve discharges processes so that more patients are not only discharged on time but are also admitted more quickly; and there has been an increase in the number of clinical staff in the Urgent Care Centre to meet the unexpected increase in number of patients from the beginning of March.
For elective care, a theatre productivity programme is in place to increase the number of patients who undergo an operation at the Trust during 2019/20, and an outpatient transformation programme is increasing the efficiency of the outpatients’ department, reducing the waiting times for patients who require an outpatients’ appointment. For cancer, the Trust is working with the south-east London cancer network to improve cancer pathways so that waiting times are reduced. The Trust has also secured additional endoscopy capacity to ensure additional patients can undergo diagnosis tests at weekends.
Reducing elective care waiting times continues to be a high priority for the NHS. The NHS Long Term Plan sets out the NHS priorities going forward and reiterates the focus to increase the amount of planned surgery year-on-year, to cut long waits, and reduce the size of hospital waiting lists.
The Clinical Standards Review is all part of delivering the clear commitments set out in the NHS Long Term Plan to improve urgent and emergency care performance and reduce provider waiting lists over the next five years, as well as delivering the new ambitions set out, all within the final long-term funding settlement. The clinically-led review of standards is considering the appropriateness of operational standards for physical and mental health relating to planned, unplanned urgent or emergency care, as well as cancer.