Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
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 improve access to and availability of GP (a) services and (b) appointments.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
We expect the measures in 'Our Plan for Patients' to make over a million more appointments available this winter.
We have provided 31,000 additional phone lines to practices, freed up funding rules to bolster general practice teams with other professionals, and accelerated support for practices to secure high-quality cloud-based telephony systems.
From November 2022, we will publish practice-level data for the first time, giving patients information on appointments at every GP practice in England.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
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 review the adequacy and practicality of (a) the condition requiring applicants to apply for an exemption 14 days before their visit and (b) other conditions attached to the exemptions granted to people travelling from red list countries to the UK to visit dying relatives during the period of covid-19 travel restrictions.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The condition for individuals to apply at least 14 days in advance of their arrival is required due to the volume of exemption applications we are currently receiving and is necessary to ensure that all exemption requests, including the most complex cases, are treated with the appropriate care and attention. In complex cases, the process may involve requests for additional information, for which applicants need sufficient time to respond.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to identify children with familial hypercholesterolemia.
Answered by Steve Brine
Public Health England, NHS England, the British Heart Foundation, HEART UK and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) are working in partnership to aid the implementation of recently updated NICE guidance on familial hypercholesterolemia (FH).
A cholesterol test is included as part of an NHS Health Check. This provides a key opportunity to identify the first case of FH within a family and, in line with NICE guidance, the subsequent testing of family members including children.
The United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) recommended against a population screening programme in 2016. The UK NSC will review the evidence for FH again in 2018/19 as part of its three-yearly cycle.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that Medway Maritime Hospital has capacity to meet the needs of the local population.
Answered by Philip Dunne
Capacity planning is a matter for NHS England. Medway Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) is the lead commissioner for Medway Maritime Hospital and we are advised that local health and care leaders are working through the Kent and Medway Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) to ensure that capacity across the STP footprint will meet future need.
The CCG advises that there are currently no commissioning plans, as part of the STP, to reduce capacity at Medway Maritime Hospital.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what level of indemnity insurance for midwives is classified as adequate by his Department.
Answered by Philip Dunne
Whether or not a midwife’s indemnity cover is appropriate is a decision for the Nursing and Midwifery Council as the independent regulatory body responsible for the regulation of midwives in the United Kingdom.
The Government supports choice in maternity services, but this has to be a safe choice. It is therefore right that registered midwives are required to have appropriate indemnity insurance to cover their scope of practice.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the cost of the proposed closure of congenital heart disease services at Royal Brompton Hospital; and what the cost would be of (a) expanding provision elsewhere and (b) transferring staff and services as a result of that proposed closure.
Answered by Philip Dunne
No decision has been made to close the congenital heart disease service at the Royal Brompton & Harefield NHS Foundation Trust. NHS England will make a decision on its proposals for changes to adult and children’s congenital heart services in England following a consultation. It has worked, and will continue to work, with providers and other stakeholders to assess the impact of these proposals. NHS England intends to publish an impact assessment and other relevant information in due course.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many admissions there were to the paediatric intensive care unit at the Royal Brompton Hospital in the last 12 months for which figures are available; what proportion of those admissions were cardiac cases; and what plans his Department has to replace elsewhere in London (a) paediatric intensive care beds and (b) the specialist children's lung disease service which will close at the Royal Brompton Hospital as a result of NHS proposals to decommission congenital heart disease services at that hospital.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The numbers of admissions to the paediatric intensive care unit at the London site of the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust, which took place during 2015 – the most recent 12 month period for which figures are available - and the proportion of those admissions that were cardiac cases, are shown in the table below:
Cardiovascular | Respiratory | Other | Total | Cardiac cases |
581 | 57 | 32 | 670 | 87% |
Source: Paediatric Intensive Care Audit Network
NHS England has not yet made any decisions following its review of congenital heart disease services. It will run a service change process, including a public consultation, on the proposals for change which it announced in July 2016. In the meantime, NHS England is working with the hospital trusts that may be affected to assess the impact of implementing the proposals.
This will include consideration of the impact on paediatric intensive care unit (PICU) services. Should the proposals proceed to implementation, NHS England would expect those hospitals accepting additional congenital heart disease patients to expand their PICU capacity accordingly. Any wider regional implications for PICU services will be considered by NHS England's paediatric critical care review, which is currently underway.
There are alternative providers of specialist paediatric respiratory services in London. NHS England will work with those providers and the Royal Brompton and Harefield NHS Foundation Trust to consider how those services might be affected and how the potential implementation of changes could best be managed.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether the current scheme of discretionary top-up payments provided by the Macfarlane Trust to its beneficiaries will be removed as a result of the Government's proposed changes to its scheme of support for people affected by contaminated blood.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The consultation on reforming the current payment schemes for those affected by HIV and/or hepatitis C through National Health Service-supplied blood/blood products closed on 15 April. The analyses of responses are still being considered by Ministers and no decisions on changes to the schemes have been taken. An announcement will be made in due course.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the contribution made by Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists to the NHS.
Answered by Alistair Burt
The Department has not made a specific assessment of the effectiveness of the contribution made by Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists to the National Health Service.
Child and Adolescent Psychotherapists form part of the wider workforce on children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing and can provide support in a range of settings. Health Education England commissions training for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy as part of a four year doctorate. The training and practice is accredited by the Association of Child Psychotherapists.
Building the capacity, capability and confidence of both the specialist and wider workforce is a key part of the Government’s approach to improving children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing, sustained through a culture of continuous evidence-based service improvement, delivered by a workforce with the right mix of skills, competencies and experience.
In addition, the Children and Young People's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies programme is transforming existing Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services to ensure they are providing evidence based therapies coupled with session by session outcome monitoring. The programme is being expanded to cover additional areas of clinical practice, so that all children and young people’s mental health services are able to deliver high quality evidence-based care by 2018.
Asked by: Gordon Henderson (Conservative - Sittingbourne and Sheppey)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it his policy to make smear tests for cervical cancer available to all women over the age of 16 who are sexually active; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) advises Ministers and the National Health Service in all four countries about all aspects of screening policy and supports implementation.
In 2012 the UK NSC recommended that the age of first invitation for cervical screening should be age 25 on the basis that there is evidence of a large number of women screened and treated with relatively little benefit below this age. Cervical cancer in women under the age of 25 is very rare. Younger women often undergo natural and harmless changes in the cervix that screening would identify as cervical abnormalities, and in most cases these abnormalities resolve themselves without any need for treatment.
Cervical cancer is linked to a persistent infection with the Human Papillomavirus (HPV), a very common sexually transmitted infection. Since 2008, girls aged 12 and 13 have been offered the HPV vaccination, which immunises them against the most high risk strains of HPV. To start with, girls up to 18 were also vaccinated so the first girls to be vaccinated will be coming into the cervical screening programme next year as they are 23 and 24 now. This vaccine will reduce the already low rates of cervical cancer in these young women and mean they will be protected for many years.