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.
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, pursuant to the Answer of 22 January 2024 to Question 8221 on Liver Diseases: Screening, what assessment has been made of the potential impact of the Government's planned measures on geographic variations in the provision of non-invasive liver scans in community diagnostic centres.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is aware that its planned measures will lead to geographic variation in the provision of non-invasive liver scans in community diagnostic centres (CDCs). This is because it is up to individual National Health Service integrated care boards to determine, based on local need and local diagnostic pathways, whether introduction of non-invasive liver scans in CDCs is necessary.
NHS England is reviewing existing liver fibrosis pathways as part of its wider diagnostic transformation work to determine the best approach for identifying patients at an earlier stage of liver disease. This includes looking at developing a pathway starting in primary care, making use of laboratory-based tests, as well as diagnostics in other settings such as CDCs.
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, with reference to the memorandum of understanding between the UK and Taiwan signed on 10 July 2023, what progress has been made to further cooperation on reciprocal health insurance agreements.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
A UK-Taiwan Healthcare Dialogue was held in July 2023, where reciprocal healthcare was discussed. We are awaiting further views from Taiwanese officials, who are consulting internally on the issue.
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 she is taking to reduce geographic variations in the provision of non-invasive liver scans in community diagnostic centres.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
FibroScan capacity is being increased across England via the Community Diagnostics Centre (CDC) programme, backed as part of a £2.3 billion investment in diagnostic transformation. The National Health Service currently plans for 11 sites to be live with FibroScans by the end of this financial year, with seven presently live with the test. By March 2025 we expect there to be 15 CDCs offering FibroScans.
The CDC test offer is based on the recommendations in the Sir Mike Richards Review, and decisions on what modalities are offered outside of the core requirements of CDCs, including FibroScans, will be based on local need as well as local funding decisions and considerations.
Through the £2.3 billion diagnostics transformation programme, NHS England is ensuring that laboratories across the country have the digital capability required to offer Intelligent Liver Function Tests.
The NHS is also delivering and considering the result from the pilot of the community liver health check programme, which is due to deliver 22,000 FibroScans per year to communities at particular risk of liver disease. From June 2022 to September 2023, over 26,500 FibroScans were delivered through the pilots, and 8% of people scanned have already been enrolled into liver surveillance programmes. The programme is being delivered across 19 areas by Hepatitis C Operational Delivery Networks to FibroScan patients at high risk of cirrhosis or advanced fibrosis, utilising 40 FibroScan machines.
NHS England is reviewing existing liver diagnosis pathways as part of its wider diagnostic transformation work, to determine what the best approach should be to identify patients at an earlier stage of liver disease, through a liver pathway starting in primary care and involving pathology labs and CDCs. This will include a combination of blood tests and FibroScans.
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, pursuant to the Answer of 22 December 2023 to Question 5140 on Miscarriage: Bereavement Counselling, how many of the National Health Service trusts that have committed to adopting the National Bereavement Care Pathway standards have fully implemented them; and what criteria will be used to monitor the compliance of those trusts with those standards.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The development, implementation and assessment of uptake of the National Bereavement Care Pathway is led by the Stillbirths and Neonatal Death charity (SANDS) which has developed and rolled out these pathway standards. As of January 2023, 108, or 84% of, National Health Service trusts had committed to adopting and implementing the standards of the National Bereavement Care Pathway. SANDS continues to encourage and support the adoption of the pathway within NHS trusts and monitor its uptake. The adoption of the pathway is not mandated by NHS England, and NHS England does not assess or monitor compliance.
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 discussions she has had with (a) NICE and (b) pharmaceutical companies on the affordability of Kaftrio.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Departmental officials regularly discuss a range of issues with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), including in relation to the development of guidance on individual products. The Department has had no recent discussions with Vertex.
NICE is an independent body, and its recommendations are developed in accordance with its published methods and processes. NICE is currently developing guidance for the National Health Service on whether Kaftrio, and other cystic fibrosis medicines, represents a clinically and cost effective use of NHS resources and recently consulted on its draft recommendations. Kaftrio is currently available as a treatment option for eligible NHS patients under the terms of an interim access agreement, which was originally reached in 2019.