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 increase the number of NHS patients who dental students can treat as part of their degree.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The number of National Health Service patients being treated by dental students will depend in large part on the capacity of each dental school or its placement providers. Undergraduate dental students currently treat NHS patients as part of their training under the correct supervision, and in alignment with the curriculum. Patients do not pay NHS charges for this treatment.
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, whether her Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the level of support available to dental students who have transitioned from a (a) student loan to (b) NHS bursary.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Bursary funding arrangements are reviewed annually, ahead of the start of each academic year. For the 2023/24 academic year, the Government uplifted travel and dual accommodation expense rates for the NHS Bursary by 50%, with the exception of travel by public transport which continues to be reimbursed at cost. We also uplifted disabled students’ allowance, childcare rates, and the means-testing threshold, increasing the amount of funding available to support dental students.
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, how much his Department has spent on contracts with NEC Software Solutions for centralising existing clinical registries.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The current contract with NEC Software Solutions for centralising the Medical Device Outcome Registry, National Joint Registry, and National Vascular Registry is £969,544. Further information is available at the GOV.UK contracts finder, at the following link:
https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/bb2b90d1-c52c-4388-9159-7e8b8dce3c32
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 she has made of performance against the 62-day referral to treatment cancer standard in England.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In February 2024, 63.9% of patients, against the standard of 85%, received treatment within 62 days of an urgent suspected cancer or breast symptomatic referral or consultant upgrade, to a first definitive treatment for cancer. This is 1.6% higher than performance in January 2024, and 1.4% higher than the same time last year.
The pandemic and recent industrial action placed significant pressure on elective services, including cancer care. We are seeing record levels of referrals, with over 12,000 urgent referrals seen for suspected cancer per working day in February 2024.
As outlined in the 2024/25 NHS England Planning Guidance, NHS England is providing over £266 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances to support delivery of the operational priorities for cancer, which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity. The Government remains committed to continuing its recovery from the pandemic, and specifically, to reduce local and national waiting times for cancer treatment.
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 provide mental health support for the dental workforce.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan commits the National Health Service to supporting staff health and wellbeing, and asks integrated care systems to develop plans to support NHS staff in maintaining their mental health.
The NHS dental workforce is also able to access the NHS Practitioner Health Service. NHS England is in the process of reviewing the service as part of a wider review into its mental health and wellbeing offer to all staff, including the dental workforce.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether he will make an assessment of the adequacy of the (a) compensation and (b) care and assistance expenses that passengers are entitled to claim for in cases of significant flight delays.
Answered by Anthony Browne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government remains committed to protecting the rights of passengers when travelling by air.
Regulation (EC) 261/2004 as retained in UK law establishes common rules on compensation and assistance to passengers in the event of long delays, cancellations or denied boarding. In June 2023, the Department published its response to the Aviation Consumer Policy Reform Consultation. This set out a commitment to further consultation on the compensation and payment framework across all forms of disruption including cancellations, delays and denied boarding. Furthermore, a Statutory Instrument came into force in the UK on 14 December 2023 to re-state certain EU case law principles in respect of Regulation (EC) 261/2004, to ensure passengers continued to be protected through additional clarity of their rights in the event of flight disruptions.
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, 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 for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 19 February 2024 to Question 13342 on Special Educational Needs, if she will allocate additional funding to Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council to help increase its capacity to conduct education health and care plan assessments.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The cost of local authorities’ Education, Health and Care (EHC) needs assessment and planning function is paid from authorities’ general fund from, for example, council tax, business rates or the Revenue Support Grant provided by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). Any increase in capacity for the EHC needs assessment team must be met from the local authority’s general fund.
Stockport special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) Local Area Partnership’s Accelerated Progress Plan (APP), which has been in place since the Ofsted and Care Quality Commission (CQC) joint area SEND revisit in September 2022, includes actions to address the quality of EHC plans in the area. Department for Education officials and NHS (England) SEND advisers have been providing support, challenge and advice in monitoring the progress of the APP.
Stockport is also one of the 55 local areas which have been invited to join the government’s £85 million Delivering Better Value Programme to support local areas to achieve maximum value for money in delivering SEND provision, whilst maintaining and improving the outcomes they achieve. One of the workstreams being funded by this grant is ‘Governance and Accountability of SEN Support and EHC Needs Assessments’ through which the department is assisting Stockport to improve their EHC plan processes and the quality of plans.
The department wants to ensure that EHC needs assessments, where required, are conducted as quickly as possible, so that children and young people can access the support they need. In March 2023, the government set out its plans to reform and improve the SEND system through its SEND and alternative provision (AP) Improvement Plan. The plan commits to establishing a single national system that delivers for every child and young person with SEND so that they enjoy their childhood, achieve good outcomes and are well prepared for adulthood and employment.
In the short term, the department is working hard to improve the current EHC plan system through a range of measures to improve the SEND system. The department is investing heavily in the SEND system. Examples of the department’s investments include: improving specialist capacity by investing over £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists from 2024, investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to fund new special and AP places and improve existing provision (including announcing 41 new special free schools and 38 special free schools that are currently in the pipeline), investing £30 million to develop innovative approaches for short breaks for children, young people and their families over three years and investing over £7 million to fund extension of the Alternative Provision Specialist Taskforce pilot programme, (delivering now in 22 local authorities) to run until 2025.
The department is also putting in place measures to improve the SEND system in the longer term, so that where an EHC plan is needed they can be issued as quickly as possible, so that children and young people can access the support they need.