Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when Public Health England plans to report on the consultation on drug misuse and dependence.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Public Health England (PHE) has convened an expert group, chaired by Professor John Strang, to consider the responses to the consultation on a possible update to the United Kingdom guidelines on the clinical management of drug misuse and dependence.
PHE will be providing an update on the plans of the expert group in winter 2014-15 following its initial meeting on 7 October 2014. The expert group plans to complete its advice to PHE and the devolved administrations by early 2016.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the performance of the National Cancer Peer Review Programme.
Answered by Jane Ellison
NHS England is currently reviewing the National Cancer Peer Review programme with a view to considering how its success might be extended into other new areas of specialised commissioning. Regardless of the outcome of this review, cancer peer review will continue to play a critical part of any broader peer review programme NHS England may look to introduce.
The number of visits undertaken by the programme changes based on how many risk visits and how many comprehensive visits are carried out. The highest number of visits completed in any one year since the programme began was 535 in 2012-13, when comprehensive visits to acute oncology were carried out. Generally, between 400 and 450 visits are completed each year.
As the programme has moved to risk assessed visits only rather than comprehensive visits (as comprehensive visits to all tumour sites have been completed) the number of visits has reduced; in 2013-14 there were 424 cancer visits.
This year, between April 2014 and October 2014, 100 cancer visits and 28 major trauma centre visits have been carried out.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will request that the Care Quality Commission publishes data on trends of GP practices prescribing benzodiazepine.
Answered by Norman Lamb
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) is the independent regulator of health and social care in England.
The CQC has provided the following information:
CQC are not currently conducting a review of the prescribing of benzodiazepine.
Clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) collect data on the prescribing of benzodiazepine but this is not collated nationally. The CQC would be alerted to any prescribing trends and outliers during discussions with the CCGs when a GP practice is inspected.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many cancer-specific reviews were completed by the National Cancer Peer Review Programme team in each financial year since the programme began; and how many cancer-specific reviews are scheduled to be conducted by the National Cancer Peer Review Programme after the current financial year.
Answered by Jane Ellison
NHS England is currently reviewing the National Cancer Peer Review programme with a view to considering how its success might be extended into other new areas of specialised commissioning. Regardless of the outcome of this review, cancer peer review will continue to play a critical part of any broader peer review programme NHS England may look to introduce.
The number of visits undertaken by the programme changes based on how many risk visits and how many comprehensive visits are carried out. The highest number of visits completed in any one year since the programme began was 535 in 2012-13, when comprehensive visits to acute oncology were carried out. Generally, between 400 and 450 visits are completed each year.
As the programme has moved to risk assessed visits only rather than comprehensive visits (as comprehensive visits to all tumour sites have been completed) the number of visits has reduced; in 2013-14 there were 424 cancer visits.
This year, between April 2014 and October 2014, 100 cancer visits and 28 major trauma centre visits have been carried out.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what her policy is on beak trimming; and what assessment her Department has made of the results of Bristol University's recent research on this topic.
Answered by George Eustice
The Government is working with the Beak Trimming Action Group (BTAG), which includes representatives from industry, welfare groups and scientists, to find ways to manage flocks of laying hens without the need to trim beaks.
As part of this process, Defra is currently funding a peer reviewed research study by the University of Bristol to assess the effectiveness of management strategies in reducing injurious pecking in non-beak trimmed laying hens. Our intention is to consider all available advice and evidence, including the outcome of the on-going research study, in the review we are conducting in 2015.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2014 to Question 211087, what current legal mechanisms are in place to tackle excessive motorcycle noise and punish the owners of such vehicles.
Answered by Claire Perry
Enforcement of legislation including punishment of offenders is a matter for the Home Office. The police decide whether an offence may be being committed and take such action as they consider appropriate in each case. Action might range from informal advice to, for specified offences, the offer of a fixed penalty, to prosecution.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will bring forward measures to deal with excessive exhaust noise from motorcycles through the MOT test.
Answered by Claire Perry
The current motorcycle MOT test already includes an inspection for excessive noise from the exhaust. A machine will be rejected where the noise from a silencer is clearly in excess of that which would be produced by a similar machine fitted with a standard silencer in average condition.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps are being taken to ensure safety on Northern Rail and TransPennine Express trains running driver-only operations.
Answered by Claire Perry
There are currently no services on either the TransPennine Express (TPE) or Northern franchises that use driver only operation (DOO). In the consultation on the future of these franchises, which concluded on 28th August, we stated that: "on the Northern franchise, we expect to require bidders to set out how DOO may be introduced onto suitable services. On TPE, this will be left at bidders' discretion." Driver only operation is a safe method that is already the working practice on around 30% of existing franchise services (including for instance many commuter services in London and Glasgow).
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, what estimate he has made of potential tax revenue to the Exchequer from shale gas and oil products in each region and constituent part of the UK.
Answered by Priti Patel
Reports by the British Geological Survey’s clearly demonstrate the potential for shale gas in the UK. Shale gas has the potential to increase our energy security, generate growth and support thousands of jobs, and the government is doing everything it can to support the safe and sustainable development of shale gas. This is why we introduced the onshore allowance, to incentivise investment in onshore oil and gas projects and kick-start exploration. Last year, the industry also announced that local communities would receive £100,000 when a test well is fracked – and a further 1 per cent of revenues if shale gas is discovered.
More work is needed to determine the extent of the gas that can be technically and commercially recovered. While there is clearly potential for shale gas to provide substantial revenue to the Exchequer in the future, no forecasts have been produced on the scale or timing of the revenue.
Asked by: Eric Ollerenshaw (Conservative - Lancaster and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken since 2009 to review policy on addiction to prescription medication; and what the total identifiable costs have been of this review process.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The Department has been reviewing policy on addiction to prescription medicine over this period, and the Government’s Drug Strategy, published in December 2010, highlights our commitment to reduce dependence on prescription and over the counter medicines.
In 2009, the Department identified a lack of information on this important subject. The Department commissioned a literature review from the National Addiction Centre and a report from the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse (NTA) which interrogated data on specialist treatment and surveyed local commissioners and specialist treatment providers. These reports were peer reviewed and published in May 2011. The cost to the Department for the National Addiction Centre literature review was £9,750 and the cost for the NTA review was £80,000.
The reports informed the discussions of roundtable meetings of expert stakeholders which were convened by the Minister for Public Health to agree action to tackle addiction to medicines. The roundtable produced a consensus statement, endorsed by the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other organisations which was published in January 2013. The only direct cost to the Department concerning the roundtables, and other meetings, was £1,928.09 in travel expenses for non-Departmental staff.
Other Departmental costs associated with reviewing policy on addiction to prescription medicine are not separately identifiable.
Public Health England (PHE) organised a seminar in February 2013 to improve the commissioning of services to treat addiction to medicine, and following the seminar, in June 2013 published a guide for the National Health Service and local authorities on commissioning treatment for dependence on prescription and over-the-counter medicines.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency published in March 2013 a learning module on benzodiazepines which includes advice for prescribers on preventing and treating dependence on these medicines.
In July 2014, with the approval of the Department and the devolved administrations, PHE launched a public consultation on whether there should be an update to the 2007 United Kingdom clinical guidelines on drug misuse and dependence. The guidelines include advice on treating dependence on benzodiazepines.