Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the guidance by the Central Digital and Data Office entitled Guidance on the Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework, published on 29 September 2023, how many red-rated IT systems are used by their Department.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As of 21 November 2023, the Department has no red-rated legacy information technology (IT) systems as defined in the Central Digital and Data Office Legacy IT Risk Assessment Framework. The IT systems provided by the Department are wholly in the public cloud.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much their Department spent on (a) current and (b) legacy IT infrastructure (i) in total and (ii) purchased in 2013 or earlier in each of the last three years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the Department’s total spend on its core information technology (IT) systems, services and infrastructure for the last three years up to 21 November 2023, as well as the portion of this spend on legacy IT infrastructure:
Financial Year | Total IT spend | Spend on legacy infrastructure |
2021/22 | £13,060,129 | £500,000 |
2022/23 | £39,712,764 | £500,000 |
2023/24 | £12,286,521 | £250,000 |
Notes:
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading 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 young people with eating disorders in Reading East constituency.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
In September we announced ‘Our Plan for Patients’, which outlines how we will increase access to National Health Service mental health and eating disorder services, including in Reading East. Ensuring easier access to general practice will expand this route to access mental health services.
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 Reading East. We will invest approximately £1 billion in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, by 2023/24 and an additional £53 million per year in children and young people's community eating disorder services to increase capacity in the 70 community eating disorder teams.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading 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 Reading East constituency.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
In September we announced ‘Our Plan for Patients’, which outlines how we will increase access to National Health Service mental health and eating disorder services, including in Reading East. Ensuring easier access to general practice will expand this route to access mental health services.
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 Reading East. We will invest approximately £1 billion in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, by 2023/24 and an additional £53 million per year in children and young people's community eating disorder services to increase capacity in the 70 community eating disorder teams.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of residential care homes that have closed in Reading East constituency since 1 January 2017.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Care Quality Commission records care homes which have closed as ‘deactivated’. Since 2017, care homes in Reading East have been deactivated. The ‘deactivated’ locations exclude care homes where the provider continues to operate under a new, separate registration, which may be due to a change in legal entity or provider.
Some care homes have both types of care home service with nursing and care home service without nursing and in these cases, the home is classified as a nursing home. A residential home is a care home service without nursing.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if her Department will take steps to increase the availability of face-to-face GP appointments in Reading East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
On 22 September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which contains measures to assist people make an informed choice on their general practitioner (GP) practice, book an appointment more easily, benefit from more care options and increase the diversity of general practice teams. This aims to increase the availability of appointment types, such as face-to-face, in England, including in Reading East.
NHS England’s guidance states that GP practices must provide face to face appointments and remote consultations and should respect preferences for face-to-face care unless there are good clinical reasons to the contrary. While remote consultations can provide additional choice, flexibility and convenience for patients, this is not suitable for all patients or in all circumstances.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading 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 reduce waiting times for elective surgeries in Reading East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ sets out how the National Health Service will recover and expand elective services over the next three years, including in Reading East. We have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available in 2021/2022 to increase elective activity. This funding aims to deliver the equivalent of approximately nine million additional checks and procedures and 30% further elective activity by 2024/25 than pre-pandemic levels. A proportion of this funding will be invested in workforce capacity and training and we have committed to invest £5.9 billion for new beds, equipment and technology.
The target to eliminate waiting times of two years or more for elective procedures was met in July 2022 and we aim to eliminate waiting time of eighteen months or more by April 2023. This will be achieved through increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand choices made regarding their care.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading 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 Reading 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 £8bn 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 GP surgeries, including in Reading East. In September 2022, ‘Our plan for patients’ announced measures to support GP practices increase access and manage workload such as the provision of 31,000 phone lines and freeing up funding rules to widen the types of staff that work in general practice, including in Reading East.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading 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 increase the uptake of breast cancer screening in Reading East constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department is working with NHS England to finalise the delivery of £10 million for breast screening units, including determining which areas will benefit from this investment.
National Health Service breast screening providers are also encouraged to work with Cancer Alliances, Primary Care Networks, NHS regional teams and the voluntary sector to promote the uptake of breast screening and ensure access to services.
Asked by: Matt Rodda (Labour - Reading East)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of care homes in Reading East constituency held a Care Quality Commission rating of good or above on 12 October 2022.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
As at 12 October 2022, 14 or 82.4% of care homes in the Reading East constituency are rated by the Care Quality Commission as ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ overall.