Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has conducted an equality impact assessment of the increase in the use of artificial intelligence in the National Health Service.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have not conducted a central Equality Impact Assessment of the increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the National Health Service. The Department leads national policy and regulation to ensure the deployment of AI tools within health and social care is safe, ethical, and effective, and that it supports equitable access to these technologies to ensure that all patients and staff benefit from advancements in AI.
National Health Service trusts are free to make their own decisions regarding the adoption and deployment of AI tools, and NHS trusts are expected to ensure that access to the tools they employ is safe, ethical, effective and equitable for all within their remit.
Aligned to the Equality Act 2010 and Health and Social Care Act 2012, Equality Impact Assessments and Equality and Healthcare Inequalities Impact Assessments should be undertaken by all organisations in relation to each specific policy, proposition, programmes, proposal, or initiative in scope of public sector equality duties.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 ensure a) all women who are eligible take up breast screening in West Sussex and b) his Department tracks and follows up on non-attendance appointments.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
All eligible individuals, including in East and West Sussex, are given a timed appointment to attend the screening location closest to their registered general practice address, with the option to change the appointment time or location given by contacting the service. Research has shown that timed appointments are more effective in encouraging attendance. The service sends text reminders two and seven days before appointments.
Should an individual not attend their appointment, they are automatically given a new timed appointment at the same location and the same text reminder process occurs. If the individual does not attend the second timed appointment, they are offered an open invitation. This means that the individual can contact the service to book their own appointment. Since implementation of text reminders, the service has seen an improvement in appointment attendance, in line with expectations based on research.
Regular “do not attend” audits are undertaken by the service. The processes involved with these audits help identify any common rationales for non-attendance that can inform service improvement strategies.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 (a) ensure all women who are eligible take up breast screening in East Sussex and (b) track and follow up on non-attendance appointments.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
All eligible individuals, including in East and West Sussex, are given a timed appointment to attend the screening location closest to their registered general practice address, with the option to change the appointment time or location given by contacting the service. Research has shown that timed appointments are more effective in encouraging attendance. The service sends text reminders two and seven days before appointments.
Should an individual not attend their appointment, they are automatically given a new timed appointment at the same location and the same text reminder process occurs. If the individual does not attend the second timed appointment, they are offered an open invitation. This means that the individual can contact the service to book their own appointment. Since implementation of text reminders, the service has seen an improvement in appointment attendance, in line with expectations based on research.
Regular “do not attend” audits are undertaken by the service. The processes involved with these audits help identify any common rationales for non-attendance that can inform service improvement strategies.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 ensure that 85 per cent of breast cancer patients start treatment within 62 days of urgent referral.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Cancer patients are waiting too long for diagnosis and treatment, and improving performance against cancer waiting time standards, including the 62-day standard, is a priority for the Government.
It is a priority for the Government to support the National Health Service to diagnose cancer, including breast cancer, as early and quickly as possible, and to treat it faster, to improve outcomes for patients across England. The Department is committed to improving waiting times for cancer treatment so that people with cancer can access the care they need more quickly.
We are committed to transforming diagnostic services and will support the NHS to increase capacity to meet demand through investment in new diagnostic capacity, including magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. As a first step towards earlier diagnosis and faster treatment, the NHS is now delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans and appointments each week.
In May 2025, NHS England announced the world’s first roll out of liquid biopsy testing, which is now available for all eligible breast cancer patients, and which aims to speed up diagnosis and inform better treatment options for those with breast cancer.
£70 million has been invested into new LINAC radiotherapy machines, to replace older, less efficient machines. This vital investment demonstrates our commitment to improving radiotherapy services, and will ensure that the most advanced treatments are available to patients who need it and will boost productivity, reducing waiting lists and ultimately improving outcomes.
The upcoming National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment. It will ensure that patients have access to the latest treatments and technology and bring cancer care back into communities which need it the most. The plan will be published early this year.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when NHS England will publish the delayed breast screening uptake improvement plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England will publish a Breast Screening Programme Uptake Improvement Review this year, to help improve uptake and address inequalities.
The review supports breast screening service providers with national solutions such as:
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 reduce delays caused by inadequate clinic capacity that prevent urgent breast referrals from meeting the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is supporting the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. The Government is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS over two years and is opening up community diagnostic centres at evening and weekends, to help catch cancer earlier, including breast cancer.
To ensure that those with signs and symptoms that may indicate breast cancer have cancer diagnosed or ruled out as quickly as possible, NHS England has published guidance for local systems on implementing a timed breast cancer diagnostic pathway. The guidance sets out how diagnosis within 28-days can be achieved for the suspected breast cancer pathway in line with Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made of the impact of his Department’s requirement for opportunity cost neutrality in NICE’s severity modifier on investment in treatments for more severe conditions.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is responsible for the methods and processes that it uses in the development of its recommendations. The severity modifier was introduced in January 2022 as part of a number of changes intended to make NICE’s methods fairer, faster and more consistent.
The design of the NICE severity modifier was based on the principle of opportunity cost neutrality to ensure that introducing additional weighting for severe conditions did not increase overall National Health Service spending or displace more care than the previous end-of-life modifier. This approach protects the finite NHS budget by preventing inflationary effects on costs, ensuring that prioritising severe conditions does not reduce health benefits for other patients elsewhere in the system.
NICE carried out a review of the implementation of the severity modifier in September 2024 and found that it is operating as intended with a greater proportion of medicines recommended than under NICE’s previous methods. Since then, NICE has continued to monitor how the severity modifier is being applied. The latest figures include data from technology appraisals published up until the end of September 2025 and show that the proportion of positive decisions has increased since the severity modifier was implemented and since data was published in September 2024. 87.0% of decisions taken since the severity modifier was implemented, compared with 82.5% when the end-of-life modifier was being used.
NICE has commissioned research to gather further evidence on societal preferences that will inform future methods reviews.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 ensure that people living with incurable secondary breast cancer have timely access to new and effective medicines, including treatments such as Enhertu and Trodelvy.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body that makes recommendations on whether new licensed medicines should be routinely funded by the National Health Service based on an assessment of clinical and cost effectiveness.
NICE has recommended Enhertu, also named trastuzumab deruxtecan, for use in the Cancer Drugs Fund for the treatment of women with HER2-positive secondary breast cancer and it is now available for the treatment of eligible patients while further data on its effectiveness is being collected that will inform a NICE decision on routine funding. NICE did not recommend Enhertu for the treatment of HER-2 low metastatic and unresectable breast cancer as a clinically and cost-effective use of NHS resources.
NICE terminated its appraisal of Trodelvy, also named sacituzumab govitecan, for treating hormone receptor-positive HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer after two or more treatments in August 2025, as the company, Gilead, did not provide an evidence submission.