Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of the Liver Transformation Programme on reducing the impact of liver disease on health inequalities, mortality rates and variations in care.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Further to the answer provided on 20 July in response to Question 17757, NHS England’s Liver Disease Programme has moved into the next phase of delivery, focused on a targeted set of priorities designed to build on the strongest areas of impact and provide strategic national support, strengthen alignment with wider transformation agendas, and enable systems to prepare for new clinical and operational opportunities, from early identification and prevention of liver cancer to treatment of severe disease.
We are conscious of the current disparities in the impact of liver disease, particularly in deprived communities, but the improvements we are developing through the Liver Disease Programme are too wide-ranging and complex to estimate potential impacts on health inequalities, mortality rates, and variations in care at this stage. We will continue to monitor these issues, and seek to provide further analysis in due course.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding her Department plans to allocate to the Liver Transformation Programme.
Answered by Diana Johnson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Further to the answer provided on 20 July in response to Question 17757, NHS England’s Liver Disease Programme has moved into the next phase of delivery, focused on a targeted set of priorities designed to build on the strongest areas of impact and provide strategic national support, strengthen alignment with wider transformation agendas, and enable systems to prepare for new clinical and operational opportunities, from early identification and prevention of liver cancer to treatment of severe disease.
We are conscious of the current disparities in the impact of liver disease, particularly in deprived communities, but the improvements we are developing through the Liver Disease Programme are too wide-ranging and complex to estimate potential impacts on health inequalities, mortality rates, and variations in care at this stage. We will continue to monitor these issues, and seek to provide further analysis in due course.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will commit to introducing an interim redress scheme for victims of the Sodium Valproate scandal, as recommended in the Hughes Report.
Answered by Emma Reynolds - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Chancellor and the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care are in regular contact on a range of issues, including health and social care policy.
As previously set out, the Government extends its sincere and heartfelt sympathies to all those affected by sodium valproate. We recognise the suffering that many individuals and families have experienced and the lasting impact these harms have had on their health, wellbeing and quality of life.
Policy on the issue of redress for families affected by sodium valproate during pregnancy is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care. The Department has been in contact with the Patient Safety Commissioner (PSC), Professor Henrietta Hughes, with regard to the ongoing health initiatives it is taking forward in conjunction with NHS England, relating to sodium valproate. Details of the Government’s work to date are set out in recent letters to Professor Hughes, which are published on the PSC website.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to tackle the under-achievement of persistently disadvantaged pupils.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department is determined to do more to improve the life chances of our most disadvantaged children and to break the link between background and future success.
The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ Schools White Paper establishes the departments plan to improve the outcomes of all children. When children born under this government finish secondary school, it is our ambition that all children achieve higher standards and the KS4 disadvantage gap will be halved. This equates to 30,000 more disadvantaged young people passing their English and maths GCSEs than today.
The department’s approach to tackle this disadvantage gap is comprehensive: rebuilding early family support, reforming how disadvantage funding is allocated and boosting its impact to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, improving teacher recruitment and retention so every child benefits from high-quality teaching, broadening the curriculum alongside access to high-quality enrichment, and launching two place-based missions, Mission North East and Mission Coastal, to drive improvement in areas where outcomes remain stubbornly low.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
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 integrate steatotic liver disease indicators into non-communicable disease policy and frameworks to meet the World Health Assembly resolution on steatotic liver disease adopted in May 2026.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The Government recognises the importance of the World Health Assembly’s resolution on steatotic liver disease (SLD), which marks the first time liver disease has been formally recognised as part of the global agenda on noncommunicable diseases.
We are taking action to ensure SLD is integrated within whole-system approaches and tackled effectively. This includes through NHS England’s Liver Transformation Programme, which aims to improve liver disease diagnosis and treatment through focus on the entire care pathway, ensuring a more integrated and effective approach to liver care. The programme has three workstreams, awareness and prevention, detection and diagnosis, and treatment, which will ensure outcomes are aligned with the goals of the World Health Assembly’s resolution on SLD.
Furthermore, the newly published Cardiovascular Disease Modern Service Framework is specifically designed as an integrated cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic strategy and makes specific mention of the importance of addressing metabolic associated SLD.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
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 potential impact of retiring the OHID Liver Disease Fingertips Profiles on the UK's ability to monitor steatotic liver disease indicators and meet the World Health Assembly resolution on steatotic liver disease adopted in May 2026.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) continues to monitor a wide range of indicators relating to steatotic liver disease, an umbrella term that includes a range of conditions where fat accumulates in liver cells causing dysfunction. Indicators include liver disease and alcoholic liver disease mortality, alcoholic liver disease and alcoholic related hospital admissions, as well as population levels of associated risk factors, including alcohol consumption, obesity, physical activity, diet, and smoking, situated in different profiles on Fingertips. The indicators only cover England.
OHID ceased to update non-alcoholic fatty liver disease hospital admissions rates and premature deaths, in people aged under 75 years old, on the Fingertips profiles in December 2025, as the indicators were not accurate assessments of that condition and only monitored the most severe forms rather than prevalence, and the level of the disease in the population.
Retiring the liver disease profile therefore has had little impact on our ability to monitor steatotic liver disease.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish a Roadmap to a Smokefree country to ensure that areas like Blackpool and Fleetwood, where smoking rates are higher than the national average, can support every smoker who wants to quit.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The previous Government’s ambition was to reduce adult smoking prevalence to 5% or less by 2030. We are going even further. Our ambition is to deliver a smoke-free United Kingdom and the landmark Tobacco and Vapes Act will create the first smoke-free generation which is expected to help reduce smoking rates of 14 to 30-year-olds to near zero by 2050.
We fully recognise the importance of stopping people starting smoking, but also of supporting smokers to quit. Alongside the Tobacco and Vapes Act, we have ringfenced funding for stop smoking services within the Public Health Grant, protecting at least £153 million per year for these services. Funding is weighted towards areas with higher smoking prevalence, ensuring we are targeting support to those who need it most, ensuring no one is left behind.
Our immediate focus is on the successful implementation of the smoke-free generation policy and moving swiftly with the secondary legislation programme. We will continue to consider the benefits of publishing a smoke-free roadmap, balancing it against the importance of successfully implementing our significant legislative programme.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether smokefree 2030 remains his Department's target.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The previous Government’s ambition was to reduce adult smoking prevalence to 5% or less by 2030. We are going even further. Our ambition is to deliver a smoke-free United Kingdom and the landmark Tobacco and Vapes Act will create the first smoke-free generation which is expected to help reduce smoking rates of 14 to 30-year-olds to near zero by 2050.
We fully recognise the importance of stopping people starting smoking, but also of supporting smokers to quit. Alongside the Tobacco and Vapes Act, we have ringfenced funding for stop smoking services within the Public Health Grant, protecting at least £153 million per year for these services. Funding is weighted towards areas with higher smoking prevalence, ensuring we are targeting support to those who need it most, ensuring no one is left behind.
Our immediate focus is on the successful implementation of the smoke-free generation policy and moving swiftly with the secondary legislation programme. We will continue to consider the benefits of publishing a smoke-free roadmap, balancing it against the importance of successfully implementing our significant legislative programme.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
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 prepare guidance on applying the Armed Forces Covenant Duty to adult social care.
Answered by Preet Kaur Gill
The Department of Health and Social Care fully supports the commitment to extend the Armed Forces Covenant duty to include social care. We are dedicated to working closely with the Ministry of Defence and local authorities to ensure the Covenant’s principles are effectively implemented to meet the specific care needs of service personnel, veterans, and their families, including considering where any further guidance might be required.
Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the merits of expanding existing NHS England funding for (a) national Armed Forces programmes and (b) staff training programmes on Armed Forces community awareness to include the social care sector.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Secretary of State for Wales
Currently, no such assessment has been made. The National Health Service has several training programmes such as the veteran-aware Trust accreditation scheme, the veteran-friendly GP accreditation scheme and the National Armed Forces Training and Education Programme. These are focussed on the provision of NHS commissioned services.
Social care is commissioned by local authorities. The Department is committed to ensuring the social care workforce has the skills and awareness needed to support all those who draw on care, including members of the Armed Forces community. The Learning and Development Support Scheme (LDSS) provides funding to help adult social care employers meet the cost of training and qualifications for their workforce.