Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she had with Cabinet colleagues about improving processing times for dental overseas registration exams.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Secretary of State meets regularly with other Cabinet colleagues and ministerial meetings with external organisations are routinely published on GOV.uk. Officials in the Department speak regularly with the General Dental Council (GDC) to discuss the ways in which it can more efficiently deliver the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) whilst maintaining high standards within the dental profession.
We welcome the GDC’s recent announcements that it is increasing the number of places available to sit the ORE. The GDC has tripled the number of places on sittings of ORE Part 1 for all sittings from August 2023 to the end of 2024. The GDC has also added an additional sitting of ORE Part 2 in 2024, bringing the total number of sittings up to four. Legislative changes that came into force in March 2023 provide the GDC with more flexibility to improve the way the ORE is run, and we will continue to encourage the GDC to make the best use of these new opportunities.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the prevalence of reasons other than retirement for maternity staff leaving NHS employment.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
NHS England collects information based on a broad ‘reason for leaving’ data field in the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), linked to staff recorded as leaving active service. ESR is the payroll system for the National Health Service; information from it is held by NHS Digital and is based upon the National Workforce Data Set, which allows for the capture of nationally consistent information about the healthcare workforce for the purposes of monitoring and workforce planning.
The following table shows midwife leavers from the NHS and Reason for Leaving in NHS trusts and other Core Organisations in England between 31 March 2022 and 2023:
Reasons for Leaving | Number of midwives |
Bank Staff not fulfilled minimum work requirement | 2 |
Death in Service | 14 |
Dismissal - Capability | 21 |
Dismissal - Conduct | 4 |
Dismissal - Some Other Substantial Reason | 10 |
Dismissal - Statutory Reason | 0 |
Employee Transfer | 3 |
End of Fixed Term Contract | 17 |
End of Fixed Term Contract - Completion of Training Scheme | 1 |
End of Fixed Term Contract - End of Work Requirement | 0 |
End of Fixed Term Contract - Other | 2 |
Flexi Retirement | 12 |
Has Not Worked | 0 |
Mutually Agreed Resignation - Local Scheme with Repayment | 0 |
Mutually Agreed Resignation - National Scheme with Repayment | 0 |
Pregnancy | 0 |
Redundancy - Compulsory | 0 |
Redundancy - Voluntary | 1 |
Retirement - Ill Health | 17 |
Retirement Age | 389 |
Voluntary Early Retirement - no Actuarial Reduction | 28 |
Voluntary Early Retirement - with Actuarial Reduction | 11 |
Voluntary Resignation - Adult Dependants | 7 |
Voluntary Resignation - Better Reward Package | 15 |
Voluntary Resignation - Child Dependants | 28 |
Voluntary Resignation - Health | 68 |
Voluntary Resignation - Incompatible Working Relationships | 11 |
Voluntary Resignation - Lack of Opportunities | 11 |
Voluntary Resignation - Other/Not Known | 213 |
Voluntary Resignation - Promotion | 62 |
Voluntary Resignation - Relocation | 205 |
Voluntary Resignation - To undertake further education or training | 32 |
Voluntary Resignation - Work Life Balance | 323 |
Unknown | 1,573 |
Midwife Total | 3,080 |
Source: NHS England
Note: Robust assessment of drivers in reasons for leaving is difficult from the data due to the high number of staff who have an unknown classification.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will publish a breakdown of the NHS midwifery workforce in England by length of service for (a) 2010, (b) 2015, (c) 2017, (d) 2019 and (e) the most recent year for which she has figures.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department does not hold the information requested.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many maternity support workers there were in the NHS in each of the last five years.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The following table shows the full-time equivalent number of maternity support workers working in National Health Service hospital trusts and other core organisations in England, annually from September 2018 to 2023:
Year | Maternity Services | Neonatal Nursing | Total |
September 2018 | 6,843 | 417 | 7,260 |
September 2019 | 6,951 | 435 | 7,386 |
September 2020 | 7,126 | 474 | 7,600 |
September 2021 | 6,987 | 464 | 7,451 |
September 2022 | 7,195 | 443 | 7,638 |
September 2023 | 7,577 | 485 | 8,063 |
Source: NHS Workforce Statistics, NHS Digital
Notes:
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her Department's plan is to ensure sufficient workforce capacity for the community diagnostic centre programme.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Health Service has recently published a Long Term Workforce Plan which sets out long term workforce projections, including for the diagnostic workforce. The Government has backed the plan with over £2.4 billion to fund additional education and training places over five years.
NHS England is committed to ensuring that there is sufficient workforce capacity, including for community diagnostic centres, to enable workforce expansion with the right skills and roles, in the right locations and at the right time. This includes reliable recruitment routes to deliver the required uplift in staffing. Last year (2022/23) this resulted in over 4,300 new starters across the training pipeline for cancer and diagnostics.
Digital diagnostic investment this spending review period is anticipated to deliver a c.10% uplift in workforce productivity, which will free up diagnostic workforce capacity further.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Monthly Diagnostic Data published by NHS England includes data on (a) pathology and (b) phlebotomy.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England does not currently include pathology and phlebotomy in their monthly published diagnostic datasets.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have died (a) while accommodated in acute mental health care facilities and (b) while detailed under the provisions of the Mental Health Act (1983) in each of the last five years.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Information on how many people have died while accommodated in acute mental health care facilities is not held centrally.
The following table shows how many people died while detained under the Mental Health Act in each of the last five years:
Year | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
Natural causes | 136 | 143 | 268 | 152 | 165 |
Unnatural causes | 34 | 32 | 33 | 46 | 46 |
Undetermined | 25 | 65 | 62 | 72 | 53 |
Total | 195 | 240 | 363 | 270 | 264 |
Source: Care Quality Commission
The following table shows how many people died while subject to community treatment orders in each of the last five years:
Year | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
Natural causes | 9 | 21 | 27 | 27 | 24 |
Unnatural causes | 5 | 10 | 23 | 14 | 17 |
Undetermined | 2 | 5 | 15 | 14 | 13 |
Total | 16 | 36 | 65 | 55 | 54 |
Source: Care Quality Commission
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many alcohol-specific deaths there were in each of the last five years, broken down by region.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Alcohol-specific deaths for 2022 will be published by the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) in February 2024.
The following table shows the number of alcohol-specific deaths across all ages by region between 2017 and 2021, which is the latest available data:
Region | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 |
North East | 399 | 411 | 437 | 522 | 541 |
North West | 1,052 | 993 | 1,013 | 1,211 | 1,344 |
Yorkshire and the Humber | 707 | 610 | 730 | 800 | 876 |
East Midlands | 516 | 555 | 523 | 612 | 706 |
West Midlands | 739 | 732 | 671 | 895 | 897 |
East of England | 492 | 461 | 543 | 570 | 641 |
London | 551 | 561 | 579 | 737 | 792 |
South East | 839 | 768 | 827 | 986 | 1,064 |
South West | 546 | 606 | 496 | 651 | 695 |
England | 5,841 | 5,697 | 5,819 | 6,984 | 7,556 |
Source: Local Alcohol Profiles for England, OHID
Notes:
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
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 28 November 2023 to Question 2859 on Dental Services, what steps she is taking to increase access to NHS dental care provision for adults in Easington constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In July 2022, we announced a package of reforms to improve access to National Health Service dentistry, which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care. NHS dental activity as measured by Courses of Treatments delivered has increased by 23% between 2021/22 and 2022/23 and 1.7 million more adults saw an NHS dentist in 2022/23 compared to the previous year, an increase of 10%.
But we know we need to do more, including in some areas where access is particularly problematic. We are working on our Dentistry Recovery Plan which will be published shortly.
From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. The Northeast and North Cumbria ICB dental commissioning team, which covers Easington constituency, continues to work closely with local dental networks as well as with providers to explore all opportunities to increase capacity and improve access to local dental services. Local practices that have the capacity to deliver additional clinical sessions outside of their normal opening hours have access to additional funding to provide treatment to patients with urgent dental care needs, looked after children, and patients with complex high care needs.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has he made of the adequacy of MRI capacity in the North East.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards are ultimately responsible for planning and reviewing healthcare services in line with the needs of their populations.
Growth in the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) asset base and increased use of MRI acceleration software is creating additional capacity for approximately 572,000 MRI examinations per annum within the National Health Service in England. This capacity will be used to support both paediatric and adult waiting lists.