Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make it her policy to make an assessment of the potential impact of any proposed amendments to Part IX of the Drug Tariff on (a) patients with continence care needs, (b) continence care services, (c) the range of continence devices available to clinicians and patients and (d) new product development and innovation in medical devices in the continence sector.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Part IX will remain a list of devices available to be prescribed in the community, via the FP10 prescription route. The Department believes that it is currently difficult to identify which devices are broadly comparable, and whether more expensive devices provide added value. The proposed amendments that were consulted on were intended to increase meaningful choice, not to decrease the choice for clinicians and patients. Comparison between products can increase awareness of different brands amongst prescribers, which can support small and medium sized businesses in entering the market.
The consultation response on the proposed amendments to Part IX is expected to be released in May 2024, which will outline the Government’s response. Any amendments that are taken forward will happen gradually, with review points and engagement with stakeholders, including industry, patient representatives, clinicians, and National Health Service organisations. We are aware that there are some very good devices in use, relied upon by clinicians and patients.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
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 adequacy of the supply of prostheses to NHS patients.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England commissions 35 prosthetic centres in England to provide specialised prosthetic services. NHS England completed a Prosthetic Services Review between 2018 and 2022, which was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic. The recommendations from the review have been incorporated within the service specification, Complex Disability Equipment – Prosthetic Specialised Services For People Of All Ages With Limb Loss, which has been updated in line with the service Specification Methods process, and will be subject to stakeholder testing during April 2024.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of bowel cancer diagnosis services in (a) Stockport and (b) Greater Manchester.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department continues to take steps to improve early diagnosis for all cancers, which encompasses bowel cancer, and in all areas, including Stockport and Greater Manchester. The Department is working jointly with NHS England on implementing the Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care, which includes plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to help drive up and protect elective activity, including cancer diagnosis and treatment.
NHS England is working to meet the Faster Diagnosis Standard (FDS), which sets a target of 28 days from urgent referral by a general practitioner or screening programme to patients being told that they have cancer, or that cancer is ruled out. To achieve this target, NHS England has: streamlined bowel cancer pathways by implementing faecal immunochemical testing (FIT) triage for patients in primary and secondary care settings; implemented non-symptom specific pathways for patients; and opened community diagnostic centres across England, prioritising this capacity for cancer services. The latest published data from February 2024 shows FDS performance was 78.1% nationally. More specifically to bowel cancer, the latest published data shows that at a national level, the number of people diagnosed with bowel cancer has risen to 41,596 in 2021, compared to 37,702 diagnosed in 2019. Since the FIT kit was introduced into the bowel cancer screening programme in April 2019, national uptake has increased from 59.2% to 67.8%. the latest data for the North-West region shows that 64.3% of 60 to 74-year-olds completed their bowel screening in the first quarter of 2023/24.
In 2023 the NHS England’s Help Us Help You campaign urged people to take up the offer of bowel screening when invited, and the screening offer for the bowel screening programme is being gradually extended from age 60 down to 50 years old by 2025, ensuring more people are screened and potentially diagnosed with bowel cancer at the earliest stage. NHS England is also now offering routine preventative bowel cancer screening to people with Lynch syndrome, with 94% of people on average receiving the test between 2021 and 2023, up from 47% in 2019.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps she has taken to help reduce waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services in Stockport constituency.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We want to ensure that children and young people get the mental health support they need, including in the Stockport constituency, and overall spending on mental health has increased by more than £4.7 billion in cash terms since 2018/19. This has enabled an expansion of child and young people's mental health services. As of January 2024, the latest data from NHS Digital shows there were 758,485 children and young people aged under 18 years old, supported through National Health Service funded mental health services with at least one contact.
We have introduced two waiting-time standards for children and young people. The first is for 95% of children, up to 19 years old, with eating disorders to receive treatment within one week for urgent cases, and four weeks for routine cases. The second is for 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis to receive treatment within two weeks of referral.
NHS England is developing a new waiting time measure for children and their families and carers to start to receive community-based mental health care within four weeks from referral. NHS England began publishing this new data in 2023 to improve transparency and drive local accountability.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to provide an Answer to Question 17965 tabled by the hon. Member for Stockport on 11 March 2024.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave to Question 17965 on 21 March 2024.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if her Department will allocate capital funds to carry out urgent estates repairs at Stepping Hill hospital in Stockport.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Stepping Hill Hospital is run by the Stockport NHS Foundation Trust. The Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board (ICB), of which Stockport NHS Foundation Trust is a partner member, has been allocated £158 million in operational capital in 2023/24, totalling to over £500 million in operational capital funding over the spending review period of 2022/23 to 2024/25. This allocation is prioritised by the ICB, according to local needs. In addition to the above funding, the trust received over £42 million in capital funding from national programmes between 2020/21 and 2022/23. Future National Health Service capital funding will be determined at future spending reviews.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to respond to the letter of 22 January 2024 from the hon. Member for Stockport on behalf of a constituent, reference NM0059.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We have received the hon. Member’s correspondence of 22 January 2024, and responded on 14 March 2024.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when she plans to respond to the letter of 16 January 2024 from the hon. Member for Stockport on behalf of a constituent, reference NM21899.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has received the correspondence of 16 January 2024 from the hon. Member and we will reply as soon as possible.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
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 ensure adequate supply of ADHD medications.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Disruptions to the supply of medicines used for the management of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have been primarily driven by issues which have resulted in capacity constraints at key manufacturing sites.
The Department has been working closely with the respective manufacturers and some issues have now been resolved. However, we know that there continue to be disruptions to the supply of some other medicines, and work continues to resolve the remaining supply issues by April or May this year.
We understand how frustrating and distressing medicine supply issues can be and we want to assure you that we are working with the respective manufacturers to resolve the issues with ADHD medicine supply in the United Kingdom as soon as possible, and to help ensure patients are able to access these medicines in the short and long term.
While we cannot always prevent supply issues from occurring, the Department already has a range of well-established processes and tools to manage them when they arise, and to help mitigate risks to patients. There is a team within the Department that deals specifically with medicine supply problems, and it works closely with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the pharmaceutical industry, NHS England, the devolved administrations, and others operating in the supply chain to help prevent shortages and to ensure that the risks to patients are minimised when shortages do arise.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
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 adequacy of the level of funding available for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No such assessment has been made. It is for individual local commissioners to allocate funding to mental health services, including child and adolescent mental health services, to meet the needs of their local populations. Integrated care boards are expected to continue to meet the mental health investment standard by increasing their investment in mental health services in line with their overall increase in funding for the year. Nationally, overall spend on children and young people’s mental health services has increased from £841 million in 2019/20 to just over £1 billion in 2022/23.