Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to publish information on how (a) routine commissioning of PrEP will be implemented, (b) PrEP will be funded and (c) local authority commissioners will be supported.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department is continuing to work closely with NHS England and NHS Improvement, Public Health England and local authorities to plan for routine commissioning of Pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) from April 2020. NHS England and NHS Improvement have already agreed to fund the on-going costs of drugs for PrEP going forward. We will provide information on how other elements of the programme will be funded and how commissioners will be supported very shortly.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will introduce an (a) access and (b) waiting time standard for adults with eating disorders in England.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The NHS Long Term Plan commits the National Health Service to testing and rolling out waiting time standards for adults in selected areas. Twelve areas in England have received over £70 million of transformation funding in 2019/20 and 2020/21 to test new integrated models of primary and community mental health care for adults.
Eight of these sites are implementing innovative service models that will improve access and quality for adults and older adults with eating disorders in line with new national guidance on adult eating disorder care.
It is important with any new standards are clinically appropriate, and ambitious yet achievable. We are starting by testing four-week waiting times for adults and children to build the evidence, before rolling out new standards across the NHS.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to reduce outpatient waiting times for adults with eating disorders.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
We are committed to expanding and improving services for adults with mental health conditions, including eating disorders. As part of the NHS Long Term Plan’s investment of an extra £2.3 billion a year by 2023/24, eating disorder services are being ramped-up across England.
We announced last year that 12 pilot sites will receive £70 million in funding to improve the provision of mental health care in the community. The pilots will bring together staff with expertise in treating a range of severe mental health issues including eating disorders. Alongside work to explore the effectiveness of different approaches to integrated delivery with primary care, NHS England will also test four week waiting times for adults and older adults in the community, and including for eating disorder services in some selected pilot sites. This will build our understanding of how best to introduce ambitious but achievable improvements to access, quality of care and outcomes.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost per person of participation in the PrEP impact trial.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Information on the cost per person of participation in the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) impact trial is not held by the Department.
The Department is continuing to work closely with NHS England and NHS Improvement, Public Health England and local authorities to plan for a seamless transition from the PrEP Impact Trial to routine commissioning. We will consult with sexual health groups and HIV community groups as part of this process.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is consulting (a) sexual health groups and (b) HIV community groups on the routine commissioning of PrEP.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Information on the cost per person of participation in the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) impact trial is not held by the Department.
The Department is continuing to work closely with NHS England and NHS Improvement, Public Health England and local authorities to plan for a seamless transition from the PrEP Impact Trial to routine commissioning. We will consult with sexual health groups and HIV community groups as part of this process.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has taken steps in response to the recommendations of the report entitled See the light: Improving capacity in NHS eye care in England, published by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Eye Health and Visual Impairment in June 2018.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department welcomed the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) report, ‘See the Light: Improving capacity in NHS eye care in England’. We have taken the concerns of the profession and the wider sight loss sector about timeliness of patient access to eye care services very seriously.
In response to concerns about timely access to care, two key initiatives the Elective Care Transformation Programme led by NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Getting It Right First Time programme have considered, as part of their respective programmes, how we can improve patient outcomes in secondary care eye care services and ensure that patients do not suffer unnecessary delays in follow-up care.
The Department is currently working with stakeholders to finalise the response to the report, which will be sent to the APPG at the earliest opportunity and following this, published on the gov.uk website.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to make new migraine treatments available through the NHS.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body that makes recommendations for the National Health Service on whether selected new medicines, including for the treatment of migraine, represent an effective use of NHS resources. NHS commissioners are legally required to fund treatments recommended by NICE to ensure that they can be made routinely available to NHS patients. Wherever possible, NICE aims to publish recommendations on new medicines within a few months of licensing.
NICE published technology appraisal guidance that recommends botulinum toxin type A for the prevention of headaches in adults with chronic migraine in 2012. NICE is also currently appraising the medicines erenumab and fremanezumab for the treatment of migraine and has not yet published final guidance. NICE expects to publish final guidance on erenumab later this month and final guidance on fremanezumab in January 2020.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to cover healthcare costs for UK nationals living in EU countries indefinitely until separate arrangements have been reached with each EU Member State.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The United Kingdom Government has proposed to all Member States that we should maintain existing reciprocal healthcare arrangements until 31 December 2020 if the UK leaves the European Union without a deal.
I laid a Written Ministerial Statement (HCWS1832) on 26 September 2019, setting out the Department’s position on ‘no deal’ reciprocal healthcare arrangements, and updated information has been published on GOV.UK and NHS.UK on the situation for each Member State, including what arrangements have been put in place. These pages will be kept updated as further assurances from Member States are received.
The UK will consider the long-term arrangements for reciprocal healthcare once we have left the EU.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of including plant milks in the Healthy Start voucher scheme.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Department has no current plans to make changes to the milk which can be purchased with Healthy Start vouchers, but we are prepared to consider the merits of allowing the purchase of certain plant-based drinks.
Asked by: Peter Kyle (Labour - Hove)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many prescription penalty charge notices issued by the NHS Business Authority have been overturned because the person was confirmed to have paid in each of the last five years.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The following table shows the total number of Penalty Charge Notices closed because the patient had paid for the prescription.
Financial Year in which case started | Number of Cases |
2014/15 | 1,122 |
2015/16 | 5,195 |
2016/17 | 10,274 |
2017/18 | 13,467 |
2018/19 | 21,497 |