Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
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 there is parity of esteem between health and social care.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Government remains committed to achieving parity of esteem for staff working in health and social care.
One of the ways we are doing this is to showcase how rewarding and varied social care careers can be, with opportunities for progression and professional development. That is one of the reasons why the Government launched the ‘Every Day is Different’ national adult social care recruitment campaign. We are making a bigger investment this year to build on the success and progress made last year and a new campaign will be launched in the autumn.
We know that there is more that we can do to support recruitment, retention and working conditions for social care workers and we will set out our proposals in due course.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
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 with experience of using adult social care are involved in the design and provision of such services.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Over the last four years, around 65% of service users were extremely or very satisfied with their care and support in England and 84% of adult social care settings are rated as good or outstanding (September 2019).
The Care Act 2014 recognises that everyone’s needs for care and support are different, and these needs can be met in many different ways. Whilst commissioning social care is a matter for local authorities who are best placed to understand the needs of local people and communities, and how best to meet them, people must be genuinely involved and influential throughout the care planning process. They should be given every opportunity to take joint ownership of the development of their care plan with the local authority, if they wish.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to expand NHS provision of screenings for new-born babies.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) welcomes proposals to screen for new conditions via its annual call for topics. The call runs from September to December and allows members of the public and stakeholders to submit new conditions for the UK NSC to consider and assess it against its internationally recognised criteria. It is important that the addition of any new conditions to the newborn blood spot programme, or any population screening programme, is supported by robust peer-reviewed evidence.
Information about the annual call for topic can be found at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-nsc-evidence-review-process
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve patient accessibility to medical cannabis.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The law was changed on 1 November 2018 to allow clinicians on the General Medical Council’s ‘Specialist Register’ to prescribe cannabis-based products for medicinal use, where clinically appropriate and in the best interest of patients. To support clinicians and develop the evidence base, the following action has been taken:
- Interim clinical guidance has been issued by the Royal College of Physicians, the British Paediatric Neurology Association and the Association of British Neurologists to support doctors looking to prescribe cannabis-based products;
- The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has been commissioned to develop updated clinical guidance on the prescribing of cannabis-based medicinal products, which will be published by October 2019. It will be based on the best available international evidence and will have been produced using NICE’s world-renowned process for delivering such guidance;
- Health Education England has been commissioned to develop a training package for health professionals to support their understanding of these products and their potential as medicines; and
- The National Institute for Health Research has issued two calls for research, to move forward the evidence base.
In the meantime, NHS England and NHS Improvement have undertaken a review and will advise Ministers on any barriers to clinically appropriate prescribing. This will help to support implementation of this policy and ensure that the demands of those patients that want to try medicinal cannabis are balanced against other demands on NHS funding, and that patients and clinicians are provided with the best information on which to decide, together, on treatment options that are most likely to provide benefit. These may include unlicensed cannabis-based products for medicinal use, but may also include consideration of licensed medicines, and other novel products and treatments that are currently going through clinical trials.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
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 all people entitled to radiotherapy in North Staffordshire are able to access that treatment.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The NHS Long Term Plan reaffirms the Government’s ongoing commitment to modernising radiotherapy. The plan specifically promises faster, smarter and effective radiotherapy, supported by greater networking of specialised expertise. This will mean more patients are offered curative treatment, with fewer side effects and shorter treatment times.
Part of the Radiotherapy Modernisation Programme includes the commissioning of 11 Radiotherapy Operational Delivery Networks across England including a West Midlands Network which will serve people in North Staffordshire. This programme is aimed at improving access to and reducing variation in the quality of radiotherapy services.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to use pharmacists to help improve care for people with type 2 diabetes.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
Taking into account announcements around the future of community pharmacy set out in the NHS Long Term Plan and the general practitioner contract, the Department, supported by NHS England and NHS Improvement, is currently working with the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee to determine the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework settlement for 2019/20 and beyond. These are confidential negotiations and as such we are unable to provide any detail on these discussions at this time.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the implications for treating anorexia of the research published in July 2019 in the journal Nature Genetics entitled genome-wide association study identifies eight risk loci and implicates metabo-psychiatric origins for anorexia nervosa.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department has not made any assessment of this research. However, its findings are a useful addition to the evidence base and should be considered by clinicians and other researchers alongside the rest of the evidence on the management of anorexia nervosa.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of implications for his policies of the recent study published in the journal, Nicotine & Tobacco Research entitled, Prescribing prevalence, effectiveness, and mental health safety of smoking cessation medicines in patients with mental disorders.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
No such assessment has been made. The Government keeps evidence on tobacco control under review. Decisions on the best licensed smoking cessation support to prescribe are a matter for clinicians in discussion with their patients, taking account of guidance including advice published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
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 the National Implementation Framework of the NHS Long Term Plan facilitates delivery of (a) improved equity in access to treatment for heart valve disease, (b) additional funding for treatment of heart valve disease to enable healthy ageing and (c) increased NHS capacity for multidisciplinary teams providing care to all heart valve disease patients.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The NHS Long Term Plan outlines NHS England and NHS Improvement’s commitment to improve the prevention, early detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease. As part of this, local systems will work to better support people with heart failure and heart valve disease through multi-disciplinary teams as part of primary care networks.
To improve early detection of heart failure, pilot schemes will be established in 2020/21 and 2021/22 to increase access to echocardiography, ahead of a wider rollout. Greater access to echocardiography in primary care will improve the investigation of those with breathlessness, and the early detection of heart failure and valve disease.
There are published service specifications that promote network working to ensure cardiac pathways are well-defined.
The Specialised Commissioning Cardiac Improvement Programme is also focusing on improving multi-disciplinary team working, including the use of technology to optimise the available resource within clinical teams.
Asked by: Paul Farrelly (Labour - Newcastle-under-Lyme)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the report by the Children's Commissioner entitled vulnerable children: time for action, published in July 2019, what steps his Department is taking to support children’s social care services to meet their statutory duties.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Government is determined to improve the way local agencies work together to identify and protect people at risk. We are implementing reforms following the Children and Social Work Act 2017, placing a responsibility on health and other partners to work together to develop effective, multi-agency arrangements.