Asked by: Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
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 regulate the provision of allergen information by home-based food businesses.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The provision of allergen information by home-based food businesses is regulated by local authority food officers. During an inspection, officers will assess a food business’ level of compliance with allergen information requirements and provide advice or take corrective action where non-compliances are identified. The Food Standards Agency (FSA) issued guidance to local authorities in November 2020 to support the consistent regulation of the provision of allergen information. To help and support home-based food businesses, the FSA has published guidance specifically targeted at starting a business at home during COVID-19. The FSA’s ‘Here to help food businesses’ provides detailed information on allergen management.
Asked by: Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to reply to the letter of 5 November 2020 from the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys on hospital communications for the visually impaired raised on behalf of a constituent.
Answered by Edward Argar
We are working to provide all Members and external correspondents with accurate answers to their correspondence, as well as supporting the Government’s response to the unprecedented challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The hon. Member’s letter will be answered as soon as possible.
Asked by: Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to reply to the letter of 26 October 2020 from the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys on access to dental and GP services.
Answered by Edward Argar
We replied to the hon. Member’s letter on 11 February 2021.
Asked by: Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on the delivery of NICE guidelines on the diagnosis and treatment of pernicious anaemia.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines provide comprehensive, evidence-based guidance for the health and care system on best practice in a defined area. They are developed by experts based on a thorough assessment of the available evidence and through extensive engagement with interested parties, including patient groups.
NHS England and NHS Improvement are mainly responsible for the referral of clinically-focused guideline topics to NICE. NHS England and NHS Improvement have asked NICE to develop a guideline on pernicious anaemia. This was commissioned on 9 March 2020 and further information on timescales will be available on NICE’s website in due course.
Asked by: Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
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 reduce waiting times for NHS hospital appointments for cancer patients in Blackpool North and Cleveleys constituency.
Answered by Jo Churchill
In December 2019 (latest data) performance at Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust against the two week wait from general practitioner (GP) referral to seeing a cancer specialist standard was 94.6%, better than the 93.0% performance standard. Performance against the 31 day wait from diagnosis to first treatment for cancer was also better than the performance standard (96%), at 99.3%.
However, performance against the 62 day wait standard for GP referral to a first treatment for cancer (85% standard) was not met and therefore a detailed full cancer pathway performance recovery plan has been developed. This forms part of Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s wider single improvement plan and is supported by the Trust Cancer Board to improve cancer waiting times. Specific actions being progressed include:
- Redesigning the prostrate pathway to enable faster diagnosis, by introducing a one stop clinic and MRI scanning;
- A system wide risk summit for Bowel Screening took place in November 2019 and actions to improve continue to be progressed;
- Robustly managing the patient tracking list for all cancer cases; and
- Review of multi-disciplinary team clinics are taking place to increase patient flow efficiency.
Asked by: Paul Maynard (Conservative - Blackpool North and Cleveleys)
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 trends in the level of infant mortality in Blackpool over the last 10 years.
Answered by Jo Churchill
Public Health England provides an assessment of trends in infant mortality for each upper-tier local authority in England where it is statistically possible to do so. This information is updated annually and included in child health profile snapshot reports.
Data for Blackpool Unitary Authority shows an annual rate of between 4.9 and 6.5 infant deaths for every 1,000 live births over the past ten years. In the period 2016-18, the rate was 6.0 per 1,000. No statistically significant trend in the rate of infant mortality has been found in Blackpool. This can be viewed in the Public Health Outcomes Framework at the following link: