Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what changes in data collection requirements have been made for recording complications and maternal deaths for early medical abortions since 30 March 2020.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No changes in data collection requirements have been made for recording complications and maternal deaths for early medical abortions since 30 March 2020.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in how many cases of abortion pills prescribed remotely since 30 March 2020 the abortion was carried out later than 9 weeks and 6 days.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information is not held in the format requested.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, in how many cases where both abortion pills have been taken at home since 30 March 2020 a woman received a scan to confirm the gestation of her pregnancy.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold this information centrally.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many women have taken two abortion pills at home (a) at the same time and (b) with an interval between the two since 30 March 2020.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold this information centrally.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many remote assessments for an early medical abortion have taken place since 30 March 2020 and how many have conducted by (a) telephone or mobile phone or (b) video call.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold this information centrally.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Women and Equalities, what assessment he has made for the implications of her policies of Paragraph 9(1) of Resolution 2318 (2020) of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly on the establishment of appropriate monitoring mechanisms to assess the implementation of anti-discrimination legislation.
Answered by Elizabeth Truss
Resolution 2318 concerns the protection of freedom of religion or belief in the workplace. Domestic anti-discrimination provisions covering religion or belief are contained in the Equality Act 2010. Anyone who feels that they have suffered discrimination because of religion or belief can contact either ACAS, for issues related to the workplace, or the Equality Advisory and Support Service (EASS) for non-employment matters. Both services provide free advice to members of the public.
ACAS and the EASS refer appropriate cases to the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which is the country’s national equality and enforcement body.
Both the EHRC and ACAS have published guidance for employers and employees about religion or belief and the workplace.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect on the wellbeing of children who may be permitted to change gender below the age of 18 without parental consent.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Valid consent to treatment is a central to all forms of healthcare, from providing personal care to undertaking major surgery. If a child is not competent to give consent for themselves, consent should be sought from a person with parental responsibility. This will often, but not always, be the child’s parent.
Decisions about whether to give medical treatment in such cases before the age of 18 without parental consent are properly a matter for clinical judgment, having regard to the best interests and wellbeing of the patient. In exercising their judgment, clinicians will be guided by various pieces of evidence based guidance, such as that published in 2017, Endocrine Treatment of Gender-Dysphoric/ Gender-Incongruent Persons: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline. This is available on the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence website at the following link:
https://www.evidence.nhs.uk/search?q=Transgender+conditions
This guideline recognizes that there may be compelling reasons to initiate sex hormone treatment prior to age 16 years, but notes that there are minimal published experience treating prior to 13.5 to 14 years of age. For the care of peri-pubertal youths and older adolescents, the guideline recommends that an expert multidisciplinary team comprised of medical professionals and mental health professionals manage this treatment.
Any child under 18 thought to have gender dysphoria will usually be referred to a specialist child and adolescent Gender Identity Clinic. Staff at these clinics can carry out a detailed assessment of the child, to help them determine what support they need. Depending on the results of this assessment, the options for children and young people with suspected gender dysphoria can include family therapy, individual child psychotherapy and hormone therapy.
Psychological support offers young people and their families a chance to discuss their thoughts and receive support to help them cope with the emotional distress of the condition, without rushing into more drastic treatments. Further information on the laws and guidelines that protect transsexual people and outline how they should be treated by medical professionals is available on the NHS Choices website at:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/gender-dysphoria/guidelines/
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress his Department is making on introducing statutory regulation of physician associates in the NHS; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The Government is committed to supporting the development of a modern health and care workforce as part of the continuing drive to provide safe, accessible and high quality care for patients and service users.
The extension of statutory regulation to groups currently unregulated will only be considered where there is a solid body of evidence demonstrating a level of risk to the public which cannot be addressed through other means of assurance, including Accredited Voluntary Registers.
As my Rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health announced in his speech to NHS Providers in November 2016, the Department is developing proposals for a public consultation to consider whether physician associates should be regulated.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent discussions he has had with his counterparts in the devolved administrations about possible additional measures to respond to an outbreak of Ebola in the UK.
Answered by Jane Ellison
I hold regular meetings with health Minister counterparts in the Devolved Administrations to consider and review United Kingdom Ebola preparedness and response arrangements.
The UK has robust, well-developed and well-tested public health and National Health Service systems for preventing and managing infectious diseases including any imported case of this type of disease, supported by a wide range of experts and specialist units.
Screening arrangements are already in place at the UK’s main ports of entry for people travelling from the affected regions. A number of national and local multi-agency exercises have also been conducted in recent months to test co-ordination, operational resilience and communications systems across the UK in order to provide assurance of Ebola preparedness. This included a recent exercise at official and Ministerial level involving all four nations of the UK. The case of the British nurse who recently returned from Sierra Leone demonstrated that the systems put in place across the UK to prepare for and respond to a case of Ebola worked well.
The Department – in close collaboration with the Devolved Administrations - will keep all preparedness arrangements under review and continually look to improve or strengthen these arrangements, as guided by expert clinical advice.
Asked by: Jeffrey M Donaldson (Independent - Lagan Valley)
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 advertise alternatives to smoking tobacco on cigarette packaging.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Smoking cessation information, to signpost consumers to quitting support, will be mandatory from May 2016 when the revised European Tobacco Products Directive (2014/40/EU), is implemented into United Kingdom law.