Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the timeframe is for NHS prescription forms to be amended to include tick boxes for universal credit.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
A revised version of the FP10 prescription form, featuring a dedicated tick-box for use by Universal Credit claimants who meet the criteria for free National Health Service prescriptions, recently received Ministerial clearance.
Any change involves major system and software updates across the NHS to allow the re-designed form to be used and processed. The revised paper form is currently being prepared for testing, to ensure it is compatible with the scanners used by the NHS Business Services Authority.
The revised form will be introduced at the earliest opportunity.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the trends in the level of (a) abuse directed towards patients in social care and (b) the number of convictions as a result of that abuse.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Department does not directly collect data about numbers of people who have been abused and we do not collect data on convictions as a result of that abuse. However, we do monitor Section 42 enquiries and the outcome of these enquiries, which are about local authorities establishing whether an adult in their area:
- has needs for care and support (whether or not the authority is meeting any of those needs);
- is experiencing, or is at risk of, abuse or neglect; and
- as a result of those needs is unable to protect himself or herself against the abuse or neglect or the risk of it.
Section 42 of the Care Act 2014 also requires councils to determine whether any action needs to be taken as a result of their enquiries.
The total number of Section 42 enquiries that commenced under the Care Act during 2017-18 fell by 1.1% to 131,860 compared to 2016-17.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will review the (a) causes of, (b) prevention measures for and (c) relief available for (i) depression and (ii) poor mental health in Birkenhead.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for ensuring adequate provision and access to mental health services for their local populations and keeping services under review.
The local Primary Care Network, including mental health services, is working in close collaboration with primary care and wider health and care organisations to specifically target areas of need.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
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 8 May 2019 to Question 249880, which local authorities have received funding to deliver the trailblazer programme.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The local authorities that have gone through to the discovery phase of the Trailblazer Programme and received funding are:
- Bath and North East Somerset Council;
- Birmingham City Council;
- Blackburn with Darwen Council;
- City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council;
- London Borough of Havering;
- London Borough of Lewisham;
- Middlesbrough Council;
- North Tyneside Council;
- North Yorkshire County Council;
- Nottinghamshire County Council;
- Peterborough City Council;
- Rochdale Borough Council; and
- Walsall Council.
The next phase of the Trailblazer Programme begins early this summer when five authorities will be selected from this list to take forward their plans to address childhood obesity at local level over the next three years.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
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 adequacy of access to mental health services for (a) adults, (b) children and (c) young people in Wirral.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department has made no such assessment. Clinical commissioning groups are responsible for ensuring adequate provision and access to mental health services for their local populations. Following a detailed procurement exercise, Wirral Health and Care Commissioning appointed a new provider for its Improving Access to Psychological Therapies service which commenced in April 2019. The service is available for those over 18 experiencing common mental health problems.
Wirral Health and Care Commissioning is also working with local providers to look at areas of transformation needed to reduce the waits and improve patient experience and access in secondary care, for children and young people and adults. This will include crisis care and physical health in serious mental illness.
In its Long Term Plan, the National Health Service has committed to test and roll out comprehensive waiting time standards for adults and children over the next decade. This builds on existing waiting times targets for psychological therapies, and for treatment for first episode psychosis and children and young people with eating disorders, which are all being met or on track for delivery by 2020/21 in line with previous commitments.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what new medical checks his Department has put in place to ensure that no NHS blood supplies are contaminated.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The National Health Service blood supply chain has rigorous safety standards making the United Kingdom blood supply one of the safest in the world. Every donor completes an extensive donor health check questionnaire before each donation. This is designed to identify donors who have a recognisable risk of infection who can then be excluded or subject to further testing. Those considered at risk are asked to defer donation until it is safe for them to do so.
All blood donations are routinely tested for hepatitis B, hepatitis C, hepatitis E, HIV, syphilis and for first time donors, human T-lymphotropic virus, before they are sent to hospitals and released into the supply chain. If any blood donation tests positive for infection it is not released into the blood supply chain.
NHS Blood and Transplant and the other UK blood services are subject to regular inspections by independent regulators and NHS Blood and Transplant safety policy is formulated by two independent advisory committees; the Joint United Kingdom Blood Transfusion Services Professional Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee on the Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs. NHS Blood and Transplant, along with the other UK Blood Services, established a UK blood supply surveillance scheme where all hospitals in the UK report, as a condition of their registration, any recognised or unexpected reactions to blood products. This allows constant vigilance to any possible threat to the safety of the blood supply.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to promote the child-obesity strategy developed by Leeds City Council to improve levels of nutrition among children from disadvantaged households in other areas of the UK.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
Through ‘Childhood obesity: a plan for action, Chapter 2’, we are delivering a Trailblazer Programme in partnership with the Local Government Association and Public Health England, working with local authorities to address childhood obesity at local level.
The programme has a strong focus on inequalities and ethnic disparities in childhood obesity and in the next phase that begins this spring, the Trailblazer Programme will support five local authorities with £100,000 a year in funding to take innovative action to address these issues in their community.
Brilliant, innovative projects are already taking place across the country, and we will look closely at what has worked in Leeds, and with our Trailblazer councils to consider what more the Government can do to enable ambitious local action.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
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 ensure that deaf people are able to access appropriate, specialist mental health services.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS England commissions specialised mental health services for children, young people and adults who are deaf. These include inpatient and outreach services for children and young people and services for adults who require inpatient care, including care in secure mental health services.
Access to services is based on a clinical assessment of need and conducted with the support and involvement of clinicians, including consultant psychiatrists and mental health nurses, with the skills and experience of working with deaf people with mental illness and are able to communicate using British Sign Language where needed.
To further develop these services, the Specialised Mental Health Clinical Reference Group provides advice and support to NHS England about improving commissioning, including through service specifications and quality schemes.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
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 1 May 2018 to Question 137006, whether he commission an assessment of the reasons for the trends in data provided by the Office for National Statistics in relation to infant mortality rates in households in different income quintiles.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
We have not commissioned such an assessment. Public Health England (PHE) monitors trends in infant mortality at national and local level as part of the Public Health Outcomes Framework, which is statutory guidance for local authorities and published on PHE’s fingertips platform. Inequalities in infant mortality are monitored by decile of deprivation, which is updated every year and available at the following link:
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
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 cumulative effect on NHS (a) staff and (b) patients of the (i) reduction in annual allowance for pension growth, (ii) introduction of the tapering of the annual allowance and (iii) introduction of the 2015 NHS pension scheme.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Department recognises that the tapered annual allowance may contribute to decisions from National Health Service staff to retire early or limit their NHS commitments. We are listening carefully to concerns raised by senior doctors and NHS employers about the impact of the tapered annual allowance.
In listening to concerns, the Department has sought to make available to NHS Pension Scheme members all possible flexibility under Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs legislation and the current fiscal framework for public sector pension schemes. The scope of the voluntary ‘Scheme Pays’ facility, implemented by the NHS Pension Scheme to allow scheme members to pay annual allowance charges from the value of their pension benefits rather than upfront, has been extended to cover the payment of tax charges from breaches of the tapered annual allowance. The Government keeps the impact of public sector pay and pensions policies under constant review.
The 2015 NHS Pension Scheme is a generous and valuable part of staff reward packages and remains one of the best schemes available. As it is a career average pension scheme it delivers a fairer pension to all members compared with the previous final salary pension scheme that favoured those higher earners with higher career pay progression. Its introduction ensures that NHS staff receive financial security in retirement, and that the scheme is affordable to the taxpayer.