Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to publish the ministerial responsibilities for Ministers in her Department.
Answered by Will Quince
Ministerial responsibilities have been published.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to expedite payments made to GP surgeries under the NHS England locum reimbursement scheme.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
General practitioner (GP) practices are entitled to claim reimbursement from NHS England for the cost for providing cover when a GP is on parental or sickness leave. The British Medical Association’s general practitioners committee were consulted on these payment arrangements, which are set out the in General Medical Services Statement of Financial Entitlements (No. 2) Directions 2021. Any changes to these payment arrangements would be subject to consultation with the general practitioners committee.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of reimbursements provided to GP surgeries by NHS England to cover the cost of a locum while a GP takes parental or sickness leave.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
General practitioner (GP) practices are entitled to claim reimbursement from NHS England for the cost for providing cover when a GP is on parental or sickness leave. The British Medical Association’s general practitioners committee were consulted on these payment arrangements, which are set out the in General Medical Services Statement of Financial Entitlements (No. 2) Directions 2021. Any changes to these payment arrangements would be subject to consultation with the general practitioners committee.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to provide additional resources to GP practices in deprived areas to increase dementia screening rates.
Answered by Will Quince
We committed an additional £1.5 billion for general practice until 2023/24 for additional staff to create a further 50 million general practice appointments through increasing and diversifying the workforce. This is in addition to a £4.5 billion real terms annual increase for primary and community care by 2023/24. The global sum allocation formula is designed to ensure that resources are directed to practices based on an estimate of patient workloads and unavoidable practice costs.
NHS England is working with general practice IT system providers to reproduce the Dementia Quality Toolkit (DQT) using SNOMED coding. The DQT includes system searches which can be used by general practitioners to identify patients whose records suggest that they may have dementia but do not have a recorded dementia diagnosis. Publication of the Toolkit is anticipated by April 2023.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of NHS dentist provision in Bristol East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
No specific assessment has been made. In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Bristol East.
The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The plan also includes streamlining processes for overseas dentists and holding the local NHS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England is also reforming dental education to improve the recruitment and retention of dental professionals.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help improve access to mental health services in Bristol East constituency.
Answered by Caroline Johnson
In September we announced ‘Our Plan for Patients’, which outlines how we will increase access to National Health Service mental health services, including in Bristol East. Making it easier to access general practice through our ABCD priorities will expand this route as a gateway to mental health care.
Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing an additional £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24 to expand these services for adults, children and young people in England, including in Bristol East.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help support the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of midwives in Bristol East constituency.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
While NHS England retain oversight of local workforce plans and are updated on vacancy rates, recruitment and retention is undertaken at trust level.
In 2022, NHS England has invested a further £127 million in the National Health Service maternity workforce and improving neonatal care, including in Bristol East. This is in addition to £95 million invested in 2021 to fund the establishment of posts for a further 1,200 midwives and 100 consultant obstetricians.
The NHS People Plan has been developed to focus on improving the retention of NHS staff by prioritising staff health and wellbeing. In 2022/23, £45 million has been invested in to support the continuation of 40 mental health hubs, the Professional Nurse Advocates programme and expanding the NHS Practitioner Health service.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has provided additional (a) financial and (b) other support to help tackle (i) patient backlogs and (ii) increased workloads in GP surgeries in Bristol East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’, published in February 2022, stated the ambition to reduce patient backlogs for planned National Health Service treatments and the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25. We made £520 million available to expand general practice capacity during the pandemic. This was in addition to at least £1.5 billion announced in 2020 by 2024 which includes supporting increased workloads in general practitioner (GP) surgeries, including in Bristol East. In September 2022, ‘Our plan for patients’ announced measures to support GP practices increase access and manage workloads, such as the provision of 31,000 phone lines and funding to expand the staff roles working in general practice, including in Bristol East.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the (a) upcoming 10-year cancer plan for England and (b) long-term NHS workforce strategy, will include specific steps to support the recruitment, training and educational needs of the breast imaging and diagnostic workforce.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney MP) on 20 June to Question 18007.
Asked by: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
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 total annual cost to public health expenditure of current air pollution levels in (a) England and (b) the UK.
Answered by Maggie Throup
The UK Health Security Agency estimates that between 2017 and 2025, the total cost to the National Health Service and social care from air pollution in England will be £1.60 billion for fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide combined. No recent estimate of the annual cost to public health expenditure of current air pollution levels in the United Kingdom has been made.