Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that health professionals across the United Kingdom are made aware of all the palliative care teams and resources at their disposal.
Answered by Ben Gummer
We are committed to ensuring high quality palliative care services are available to everyone who needs them, whether they are being cared for in hospital, a care home, or their own home.
Palliative and end of life care is everyone’s business and individual clinicians, hospitals and general practitioner practices are responsible for ensuring they are aware of local palliative care provision and for coordinating that care effectively so that their patients can receive high quality palliative care services when they need them.
In 2014, we published One Chance to Get it Right, which set out a new approach to care for dying people based on five Priorities for Care, and specific guidance for health and care staff, provider organisations and commissioners in England on implementing the new approach.
Following publication, members of the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People, which produced the report, undertook a range of activities to raise awareness of the Priorities and the new approach among health and care staff, the public, dying people, relatives and carers.
Alongside this, Health Education England, working with NHS England and others developed new and updated education and training materials and provision to ensure the new approach was fully embedded in the training staff receive.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what his policy is on ringfencing Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme payments specifically to pay for medicinal drugs.
Answered by George Freeman
Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme (PPRS) payments are allocated to each of the four countries of the United Kingdom on an agreed basis each year. It is a matter for the devolved health administrations to decide how to use the apportioned payments they receive from the PPRS.
The Department ensures that all the income it receives from PPRS payments in England is reinvested in the National Health Service for patients’ benefit. The Department includes the expected PPRS payments in setting the NHS England allocations in advance of each year.
NHS England is responsible for allocating its overall budget (which includes expected income from PPRS payments in England) between clinical commissioning groups, specialised commissioning etc. Following normal Government accounting rules, there is no separately identified or ring-fenced funding stream associated with the PPRS payments.
The Government believes that NHS commissioners and providers are best placed to decide how to allocate their budgets to deliver improvements in the outcomes for patients. The PPRS includes a number of commitments for improving patient outcomes by improving access to clinically and cost effective medicines.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to increase the number of children who are partaking in 60 minutes of daily exercise.
Answered by Jane Ellison
This is a devolved matter.
On 2 July, Public Heath England launched the “Change4Life” 10 Minute Shake Up campaign with Disney. This aims to inspire the nation's children to get moving and help them achieve the recommended 60 minutes of exercise per day.
The Department also funds the PE and Sport Premium for Primary Schools and School Games with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Education to encourage more children and young people to become active.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate he has made of the number of licences the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority will grant under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015 over the next three years.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The Department has made no estimate of the number of licences that the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authorisation (HFEA) might grant over the next three years.
The HFEA will make an assessment of applications as set out in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology (Mitochondrial Donation) Regulations 2015.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether it is his policy to permit Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats techniques in the UK.
Answered by George Freeman
The use of Clustered Regular Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) is one of the many new technologies emerging in the field of genetic research. The technique is rapidly becoming a standard method to introduce mutations into cell lines and laboratory animals in order to understand the cause of serious diseases such as cancer and dementia and identify new therapies.
The United Kingdom has a strong and clear regulatory framework that bans genetic modifications of the nuclear genome that can be inherited from one generation to another. The use of CRISPR is permissible in the UK in a research setting, as long as any research carried out has the appropriate approvals. In the case of human embryos, research but not treatment using these techniques would be permissible provided the UK national regulator, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, was satisfied that the research met the criteria set out in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, as amended.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent estimate he has made of the cost to the public purse of NHS abortion services from May 2010 to April 2015.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Information about expenditure on termination of pregnancy services is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will bring forward legislative proposals to reform the social care system so that veterans injured before 6 April 2005 do not have the cost of their care taken from their military compensation.
Answered by Norman Lamb
We are in the process of introducing fundamental reforms to how we pay for social care that will make the system fairer for everyone, including veterans. At the moment, someone who has the highest care needs can risk losing all they have to meet the cost of their care. These reforms will mean that, for the first time ever, everyone will be protected from the risk of catastrophic care costs. The proposals are currently out for consultation and can be found at:
The War Pensions Scheme, which provides no fault compensation for injury caused by Service before April 2005, includes certain allowances that were designed to pay for ongoing care costs and that is why it is has been taken into account under the social care charging rules. The Armed Forces Compensation Scheme, which provides no fault compensation for injury caused by Service after April 2005, operates differently. Officials in the Department are working with the Royal British Legion to review this issue and assess how the rules could be aligned in future to ensure fair treatment of veterans under both of these schemes.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to reduce the number of people suffering from idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The cause of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is still unclear but the condition appears to be connected with cells inside the lungs known as alveolar epithelial cells. There is currently no cure for IPF so the aim of treatment is to try to relieve symptoms and slow its progression.
Younger people with IPF who are in a relatively good state of health may be a suitable candidate for a lung transplant.
Public Health England is currently running a campaign to encourage those with inappropriate breathlessness (which is a symptom of IPF) to go and see their general practitioner. It is primarily aimed at earlier diagnosis of heart and lung diseases, with scope to reduce premature mortality and to improve the quality of life of those living with these conditions.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will increase funding for eye care research to tackle eye-related health conditions.
Answered by George Freeman
Investment in eye-related research by the Department’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) has increased from £7.1 million in 2009/10 to £15.6 million in 2013/14.
As a major part of its investment in this field, the NIHR has awarded £26.5 million over five years (2012-17) to the NIHR biomedical research centre at Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust and University College London Institute of Ophthalmology.
Recently-approved new major NIHR investment includes a £2.2 million study of early detection of neovascular age-related macular degeneration and a £1.4 million randomised comparison of femtosecond laser assisted and manual phacoemulsification cataract surgery for adults with visually significant cataract.
The usual practice of the NIHR is not to ring-fence funds for expenditure on particular topics: research proposals in all areas compete for the funding available. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including eye care. These applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality. In all disease areas, the amount of NIHR funding depends on the volume and quality of scientific activity.
Asked by: Ian Paisley (Democratic Unionist Party - North Antrim)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will introduce more specialised nursing staff for community hospitals to assist people with diabetes.
Answered by Dan Poulter
Through the Mandate, we have asked NHS England to deliver continued improvements in relation to the experience of care, including long-term conditions such as diabetes. Local healthcare organisations, with their knowledge of the people they serve, are best placed to plan and employ a workforce based on clinical need and sound evidence.
The Government recognises that diabetes specialist nurses have made a huge difference to the care and outcomes for many people with diabetes. We want to see the sorts of benefits these roles bring – improved quality of life, support with decision making, symptom management, emotional support – extended to as many people as possible. We are operating now in a time of increasing demands on the National Health Service, which is why we need to be thinking radically about the way services are structured to ensure that this sort of holistic, person-centred support is there for everyone. The Five Year Forward View, published in October 2014 by NHS England sets out some of the care models that they will be supporting in the coming years, which aim to do just this.