Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of waiting times for adult gender affirming care appointments on the mental health of those individuals.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Demand for adult gender services has reached unprecedented levels. We have therefore significantly increased investment in mental health and gender services.
NHS England have increased the number of adult Gender Clinics from 7 to 12 by rolling out 5 pilot clinics, including in Sussex. These pilots are being evaluated to inform decisions on their wider rollout.
We are also increasing the numbers of clinicians in gender medicine through an accredited post-graduate training credential.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the extent to which the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is fulfilling its duties under the NHS Constitution for England; and whether NHS Trusts are required to ensure the provision of out of hours pharmacy services.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The Department does not assess foundation trusts in fulfilling their duty to have regard to the NHS Constitution. NHS foundation trusts do not have responsibility for community pharmacy service provisions, as integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning community pharmacy.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 5 December 2023 to Question 4318 on Prostate Cancer: Drugs, if he will make a comparative assessment of the (a) decision-making criteria for and (b) process to approve the use of abiraterone acetate to treat locally advanced high-risk non-metastatic prostate cancer in (i) NHS England and NHS Wales and (ii) NHS Scotland.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
There are no plans for a comparative assessment to be made. Health is a devolved matter and decisions on access to medicines in Scotland and Wales are a matter for the devolved administrations.
NHS England sent a policy proposition to stakeholders on 29 November 2023 regarding abiraterone acetate and prednisolone for high-risk, hormone sensitive, non-metastatic prostate cancer, and has invited feedback by 14 December 2023. The completion of NHS England’s consideration will depend on the feedback received from stakeholders which will help inform the final draft of the proposition, and the outcome of the impact assessment which will inform the timing of decision making.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 5 December 2023 to Question 4318 on Prostate Cancer: Drugs, when does she expect NHS England to complete their consideration of a clinical policy proposal for abiraterone as a treatment option for patients newly diagnosed with high risk, non-metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
There are no plans for a comparative assessment to be made. Health is a devolved matter and decisions on access to medicines in Scotland and Wales are a matter for the devolved administrations.
NHS England sent a policy proposition to stakeholders on 29 November 2023 regarding abiraterone acetate and prednisolone for high-risk, hormone sensitive, non-metastatic prostate cancer, and has invited feedback by 14 December 2023. The completion of NHS England’s consideration will depend on the feedback received from stakeholders which will help inform the final draft of the proposition, and the outcome of the impact assessment which will inform the timing of decision making.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to prioritise bipolar disorder within the implementation of his Department's suicide prevention strategy; and if he will set out the measures his Department will put in place to safeguard the lives of people affected by bipolar disorder.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The new suicide prevention strategy for England is a five-year strategy which sets out the Government’s ambition for suicide prevention. It is a multi-sector and cross-Government suicide strategy, with actions from a wide range of organisations that will be delivered over the next few years.
The Department has established a £10 million Suicide Prevention Grant Fund to run from 2023 to March 2025 to support voluntary, community or social enterprise organisations, including those who support people with bipolar, to deliver suicide prevention activity.
The Department, alongside NHS England, intends to explore opportunities to improve the quality of care for patients with mental health diagnoses and ensure compliance with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines. This includes patients diagnosed with affective disorders, including depression and bipolar, who accounted for 42% of all patient suicides in England between 2010 and 2020.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
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 increase access to NHS dental services in (a) Brighton, Kemptown constituency, (b) the City of Brighton and Hove and (c) Lewes District.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
In July 2022 we announced a package of reforms to improve access to National Health Service dentistry across England, which outlined the steps we are taking to meet oral health need and increase access to dental care in England. The changes that have been implemented include improvements to ensure dentists are remunerated more fairly for more complex work and the introduction of a minimum Units of Dental Activity value. NHS dental activity as measured by Courses of Treatments delivered has increased by 23% nationally between 2021/22 and 2022/23.
From 1 April 2023, responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to all integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment and have access to regular data which will support them in their plans to improve access to NHS dentistry in their area.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, published on 30 June 2023, sets out the steps the National Health Service and its partners need to take to deliver an NHS workforce that meets the changing needs of the population over the next 15 years. These include a 40% increase to dentistry undergraduate training places by 2031/32.
But we know we need to do more, and that there are some areas where access is particularly problematic. We are working on our Dentistry Recovery Plan which will address how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether NICE plans to amend its guidance on the treatment of locally advanced high-risk non-metastatic prostate cancer to recommend the use of abiraterone acetate in England.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Abiraterone is not licensed for the treatment of non-metastatic prostate cancer and has therefore not been appraised by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) for such use. NHS England is currently considering a clinical policy proposal for abiraterone as a treatment option for patients newly diagnosed with high risk, non-metastatic, hormone-sensitive prostate cancer, or in whom prostate cancer has relapsed after at least 12 months without treatment.
NICE will consider the impact of NHS England’s work on its guideline on the diagnosis and management of prostate cancer in due course.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential for legislative changes to help remove stigma and discrimination against people living with HIV.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach in England to drive forward progress and achieve our goal to end new HIV transmissions, AIDS and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. It includes a key objective to improve the quality of life for people living with HIV and addressing stigma. In December, UK Health Security Agency will publish a monitoring and evaluation report of the HIV Action Plan for England as well as the results of the Positive Voices 2022 survey which provide granular data and findings on HIV-related stigma and discrimination experienced by people living with HIV in England, Wales and Scotland.
The Government announced on 24 October its intention to change the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 to allow people who are HIV positive, but with an undetectable viral load, to donate their gametes as part of fertility treatment and will continue considering potential changes which can support people living with HIV and improve their quality of life.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
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 raise awareness of advice on HIV (a) prevention and (b) testing.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
HIV testing and prevention is provided to local authorities in England through the public health grant, funded at £3.5 billion in 2023-2024. Through this grant, they are mandated to commission comprehensive open access to most sexual health services, including free and confidential HIV testing, and the provision of the HIV prevention drug PrEP. It is for individual local authorities to decide their spending priorities based on an assessment of local need and to commission the service lines that best suit their population.
This is further supported by national initiatives under the Government’s HIV Action Plan. As part of the Plan, NHS England is investing £20 million over three years to implement opt-out HIV testing in EDs (emergency departments) in local areas with extremely high HIV prevalence. Provisional data from NHS England indicates that the opt-out testing programme has helped to find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated HIV and more than 1,900 cases of undiagnosed or untreated hepatitis during its first year. We will be assessing all of this evidence, alongside the data on progress towards our ambitions to end new HIV transmissions and AIDS- and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030, to decide whether we further expand the programme.
The Department is also investing over £3.5million from 2021-2024 to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme. This is a nationally co-ordinated programme of HIV prevention work, including public campaigns such as National HIV Testing Week, that is designed to complement locally commissioned prevention activities in areas of high HIV prevalence.
Asked by: Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Labour (Co-op) - Brighton, Kemptown)
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 increase accessibility to pre-exposure prophylaxis.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
The HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group (ISG) is developing a roadmap to help guide our efforts to improve equitable access, uptake and use of pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) to meet the needs of key populations at significant risk of HIV. This forms part of the group’s work to monitor and drive forward the implementation of the HIV Action Plan.
HIV PrEP is currently only prescribed at specialist sexual health services, but as we work towards our 2030 ambitions, we will explore opportunities for making it available in a variety of settings. The roadmap is expected to be made available by the ISG by the end of the year.