Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
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 the detection of hepatitis B and C.
Answered by Jo Churchill
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the mortality rate was for people under 75 years of age with cancer in each of the last three years.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The directly age-standardised cancer mortality rates per 100,000 population in England under 75 years of age for each of the three most recently published years are shown in the following table:
Year | Mortality rate |
2015 | 136.4 |
2016 | 135.6 |
2017 | 131.8 |
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) recruit and (b) retain GPs.
Answered by Jo Churchill
In January 2019 we announced in the NHS Long Term Plan that we are investing an extra £4.5 billion in primary and community care by 2024. This was followed by the five-year general practitioner (GP) contract, which will provide greater financial security and certainty for practices to plan ahead and will see billions of extra investment for improved access, expanded services at local practices, the development of primary care networks and longer appointments for patients who need them.
NHS England and Health Education England (HEE) are working together with the profession to increase the GP workforce. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why GPs are leaving the profession and encourage GPs to return to practice.
In 2018, a record 3,473 doctors accepted a place on GP specialty training. Additionally, NHS England’s International GP Recruitment programme is bringing suitably qualified doctors from overseas to work in English general practice.
We have a broad offer to support GPs to remain in the National Health Service including the GP Retention Scheme, the GP Retention Fund, the GP Health Service and the Releasing Time for Care Programme.
It is encouraging to see as of June 2019, over 250 more doctors, and over 800 more nurses and other staff with direct patient care responsibilities working in general practice compared to June 2018.
To address workload pressures and building on the success in expanding the wider workforce, the new five-year contract for general practice will see funding towards up to 20,000 extra staff working in GP practices, such as physiotherapists and pharmacists. This will help free up doctors to spend more time with the patients who need them.
The interim People Plan published in June 2019 set out the actions the NHS will take now to secure the right staff, leadership and culture it needs to deliver the Long Term Plan and high quality, safe care. The final People Plan will set out a broader strategy for a sustainable general practice workforce, through both recruitment and retention programmes.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support the mental health of veterans.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
In England, veterans access mainstream National Health Service provided mental health services as well as the bespoke veteran specific mental health services that NHS England and NHS Improvement have put in place.
The Transition, Intervention and Liaison service launched in 2017, supports serving personnel who need additional mental health support as they are leaving the Armed Forces and veterans who have mental health issues. There are three elements to the service:
- in-reach services for those in transition, leading up to, and leaving the Armed Forces;
- services for veterans with complex presentation; and
- general services for veterans.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to (a) measure and (b) improve patient experience and quality of compassionate care.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Feedback on patients’ views on the services they receive is a vital part of the way the National Health Service improves services and delivers improved outcomes for patients.
Patients are offered a range of opportunities to feed back on the quality of the care they receive. These include near real-time feedback such as the Friends and Family Test, which is a survey conducted by NHS service providers to identify good practice and opportunities to make improvements, locally developed feedback programmes, and annual feedback such as national surveys including the Cancer Patient Experience Survey, the GP Patient Survey, published by NHS England, and surveys conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to assess experiences in specific settings such as inpatient care.
The CQC also inspects against whether services are caring and responsive to people’s needs. Under the ‘caring’ domain the CQC’s inspectors look for evidence that staff involve and treat service-users with compassion, kindness, dignity and respect.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many doctors there were in hospitals in Surrey in (a) the first quarter of 2010 and (b) the latest period for which figures are available.
Answered by Chris Skidmore
NHS Digital publishes Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS) workforce statistics for England. These include staff working in hospital trusts and clinical commissioning groups, but not staff working in primary care, local authorities or other providers.
The following table shows the number of doctors at Royal Surrey County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust as at May 2019, the latest available data, compared to the first three months of 2010. Figures are full time equivalents.
| January 2010 | February 2010 | March 2010 | May 2010 | May 2019 |
Doctors | 923 | 939 | 939 | 943 | 1,244 |
Source: NHS Digital Workforce Statistics
Change in the numbers may be seasonal: it is recommended that comparisons between years use the same month (for example, May 2010 to May 2019).
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to improve support for children and young people with mental health issues.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Expanding access to children’s mental health services is a priority for this Government. In 2017/18, around 30.5% of children and young people then estimated to have a mental health condition were able to benefit from treatment and support, up from an estimated 25% two years earlier.
The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, published in 2016, committed that, by 2020/21, at least an additional 70,000 children and young people each year will receive treatment; that there is a mental health crisis response that meets the needs of under 18 year olds; and that we will achieve a target of 95% of children and young people with eating disorders accessing treatment within one week for urgent cases, and four weeks for routine cases. We are providing an additional £1.4 billion to improve specialist children and young people’s mental health services between 2015-21.
On top of those commitments, the NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, set an ambitious goal of an extra 345,000 children and young people aged 0-25 (in addition to the 70,000 children referred to above) receiving support via NHS-funded mental health services by 2023/24; that there will be 24/7 mental health crisis provision for children and young people; and that there will be a comprehensive offer for 0-25 year olds that reaches across mental health services for children, young people and adults. NHS England has also published its Mental Health Implementation Plan in July 2019, setting out its plans for delivering its Long Term Plan goals.
Mental health services will grow faster than the overall National Health Service budget, with a ringfenced investment worth at least £2.3 billion a year for mental health services by 2023/24. Children and young people’s mental health services will grow faster than both overall NHS funding and total mental health spending.
We are making good progress towards our goals. In December 2018 we announced the first 25 trailblazer sites that will provide new school-based mental health support teams for those with mild to moderate mental health issues, and which will be operational by the end of this year. On 12 July 2019, NHS England announced that more mental health support teams are to be set up in 57 areas and will be operational by the end of 2020. We are trialling a four-week waiting time standard in 12 of the trailblazer sites, ahead of introducing new national waiting time standards for all children and young people who need specialist mental health services.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
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 protect the mental health of NHS staff.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The NHS Long Term Plan sets out that NHS England will provide targeted support to trusts to access fast track occupational health services and a line management development programme, building on existing work with 70 organisations. This complements the publication of the NHS Health and Wellbeing Framework in May 2018, which includes recommendations from ‘Thriving at Work: The Stevenson/Farmer review of mental health and employers’.
Asked by: Jonathan Lord (Conservative - Woking)
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 publicise whistleblower rights and protections for GPs.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
We are committed to ensuring that all National Health Service staff, including general practitioners, are aware of how and where they can speak up about their concerns and that when they do so they are supported, and their concerns are taken seriously. A national speaking up helpline ‘Speak Up Direct’ provides advice and support on speaking up in the NHS for all staff.
The National Guardian we set up in 2016 and the local network of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians are playing a crucial role across the country in providing safe avenues for staff to raise concerns within their own organisations. The National Guardian also works to raise awareness of speaking up opportunities for all NHS staff and promotes the value of a healthy ‘speaking up’ culture.
In 2016, NHS England published Freedom to Speak Up guidance for primary care and the National Guardian is currently focusing on accelerating the implementation of Freedom to Speak Up and the local Guardian role in primary care organisations.