Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 reduce ambulance response times for emergencies in East Yorkshire.
Answered by Will Quince
A range of measures are in place to reduce ambulance response times, including in East Yorkshire. The National Health Service winter resilience plan will increase NHS bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, helping reduce pressure in accident and emergency so that ambulances can get swiftly back out on the road.
An additional £250 million has been made available to enable the NHS to buy up beds in the community to safely discharge thousands of patients from hospital and capital for discharge lounges and ambulance hubs. This will improve flow through hospitals and reducing waits to handover ambulance patients. This is on top of the £500 million already invested last year.
NHS England has allocated £150 million of additional system funding for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, alongside £20 million of capital funding to upgrade the ambulance fleet in each year to 2024/25.
As announced in the Autumn Statement, the Government is investing an additional £3.3 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25 to enable rapid action to improve urgent and emergency, elective, and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. The NHS will soon set out detailed recovery plans to deliver faster ambulance response times.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 UK's readiness for any future pandemic; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact on that readiness of the discontinuance of several of the initiatives of the UK Vaccine Taskforce.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The United Kingdom has flexible and well-tested pandemic response capabilities. We are continuously updating our pandemic plans to reflect the latest scientific information and lessons learned from exercises and our response to emergencies, including COVID-19. We cannot perfectly predict the characteristics of a new pandemic pathogen and therefore our pandemic preparedness is an area kept under constant review to ensure readiness.
The UK Vaccine Taskforce’s responsibilities including vaccine supply, onshoring of UK vaccine capability and international engagement are being integrated across Government functions including UK Health Security Agency. As part of our overall pandemic response capabilities the Government has in place an Advanced Purchase Agreement to guarantee access to pandemic specific influenza vaccines, which would likely be available within four to six months after the pandemic has started.
In addition, at the end of December, UK Government and Moderna entered a strategic partnership to set up mRNA research and development and manufacturing facilities in the UK, capable of producing up to 250 million vaccines per year in the event of a pandemic.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 contractual terms of dentists to incentivise them to work in areas having difficulty providing NHS dentistry services; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
NHS England are leading discussions with the British Dental Association, other dental stakeholder groups and patients for further reform of the NHS dental system in 2023. We are aware that certain areas have particular challenges to access to dental care. One of the aims of the next stage of the National Health Service dental system reforms is to improve access for patients, including in areas that traditionally experience challenges in access.
In September 2022 we announced ‘Our plan for patients’ to make improvements to the NHS dental system. On 25 November 2022, amendments to the NHS dental contract came into effect, which will increase access for patients, make NHS dentistry a more attractive place to work and increase efficiency.
To incentivise high performing practices to expand and deliver more NHS care, particularly in those areas where NHS dentistry is less prevalent, we have enabled, subject to commissioner agreement, practices to deliver up to 110% contracted activity so that more patients can be seen.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many (a) doctors and (b) nurses have been recruited by the NHS in Yorkshire in each of the last 5 years.
Answered by Will Quince
The following table shows the headcount number of doctors and nurses and health visitors that joined active service in National Health Service hospital trusts and commissioning bodies in the North East and Yorkshire region for the last five years.
| June 2017 to 2018 | June 2018 to 2019 | June 2019 to 2020 | June 2020 to 2021 | June 2021 to 2022 |
Doctors | 2,881 | 3,186 | 4,088 | 2,755 | 3,514 |
Nurses and Health Visitors | 4,865 | 5,226 | 5,827 | 4,316 | 6,741 |
Source: NHS Digital, Quarterly Workforce Statistics June 2022
Notes:
Joiners can include those returning to active service (for example from maternity leave or career breaks), as well as those newly joining the NHS or joining from a different part of the health and social care system (for example general practice). This is particularly important to note in respect to doctors as they may undertake periods of work outside of hospital trusts as part of their training programmes and development.
Data is published by NHS England Geographical region hence the data presented covering the wider geography of the North East and Yorkshire region.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is the estimated cost to the NHS of treating gambling addictions in each of the 5 years for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
NHS England has funded specialist gambling treatment clinics since 2019. Expenditure on the specialist clinics was £1 million in 2019/20, £1 million in 2020/21, £3 million in 2021/22 and is projected at £4 million in 2022/23.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 help ensure the reduction of added nitrates in bacon and ham; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) works with the food industry to ensure that nitrites and nitrates are used at the lowest possible levels to achieve its technological function without affecting the safety of the food.
The maximum legal limits for nitrates are based on scientific evaluation and monitored through risk-based compliance checks. There are no plans to reduce the levels of nitrates in processed pork products. The FSA will seek independent scientific advice should new credible studies on nitrates emerge in addition to existing evidence, to determine whether further action on authorised food additives is necessary.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his department taking to help reduce waiting times for elective surgery in East Yorkshire.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ sets out how the National Health Service will recover and expand elective services over the next three years, including in East Yorkshire. We have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available in 2021/2022 to increase elective activity. This funding aims to deliver the equivalent of approximately nine million additional checks and procedures and 30% further elective activity by 2024/25 than pre-pandemic levels. A proportion of this funding will be invested in workforce capacity and training and we have committed to invest £5.9 billion for new beds, equipment and technology.
The target to eliminate waiting times of two years or more for elective procedures was met in July 2022 and we aim to eliminate waiting time of eighteen months or more by April 2023. This will be achieved through increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand choices made regarding their care.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made in the last six months to increase the number of face to face GP appointments available in East Yorkshire; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
Data on general practice appointments is not collected in the format requested.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many wards are closed or not being used as a ward; and which hospitals those wards are in.
Answered by Will Quince
The information requested is not collected centrally.