Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much (a) NHS and (b) private work was completed by GDC registered dentists who qualified (i) in the UK, (ii) overseas and (iii) in total in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Primary care dentistry in the National Health Service is delivered through contracts structured around Units of Dental Activity (UDAs). Each treatment is allocated a number of UDAs in proportion to the complexity and amount of work required. The following table shows the number of UDAs delivered by dentists who have qualified within the United Kingdom and outside thereof whilst working in the NHS in England for 2016/17 onwards:
Year | UK Qualified UDA Delivered | Non-UK Qualified UDA Delivered | Other UDA Delivered | Total UDA Delivered |
2016/17 | 48,825,392 | 26,394,403 | 10,644,608 | 85,864,403 |
2017/18 | 48,640,153 | 26,323,343 | 8,363,069 | 83,326,565 |
2018/19 | 49,482,862 | 27,192,292 | 6,528,618 | 83,203,772 |
2019/20 | 48,144,326 | 27,032,548 | 4,666,855 | 79,843,728 |
2020/21 | 15,260,168 | 8,265,064 | 927,591 | 24,452,823 |
2021/22 | 35,781,811 | 20,777,093 | 1,210,218 | 57,769,122 |
2022/23 | 43,918,652 | 25,763,340 | 486,695 | 70,168,687 |
Source: NHS Business Services Authority
Notes:
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether trading standards officers are required to share information on seized non-compliant (a) tobacco and (b) vaping products with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) works in collaboration with a number of enforcement and regulatory agencies to share intelligence, support strategic planning, produce guidance, and review emerging issues. There is no legal requirement for Trading Standards to share seizure data with the MHRA, however this data is shared in cases where the MHRA can provide evidence to support ongoing compliance and enforcement investigations.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an estimate of the average number of full time equivalent trading standards officers per local authority over each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Simon Hoare - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The department does not collect this information centrally.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how many full time equivalent staff are dedicated to the work of the Illicit Tobacco Taskforce; how often will the taskforce meet; has the taskforce met to date; whether illicit vaping products will be included as part of its remit; and what recent estimate has he made of losses in tax revenue from the illicit trade in (a) tobacco and (b) vaping products in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Gareth Davies - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
We plan to establish the taskforce during 2024/25. We are not yet able to give details on meeting frequency or staff numbers.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
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 tackle the sale of illegal vapes on the black market.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children, with youth vaping tripling in the last three years, and one-in-five children having now used a vape. Underage sales and illicit vapes are undermining the work the Government is doing to protect our children's health.
To address this, in April 2023, the Government announced a £3 million investment over two years to enhance work on illicit vape enforcement. Led by National Trading Standards, this builds on existing work by local trading standards officers across the country to ensure that vapes sold in the United Kingdom comply with The Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, as well as other relevant legislation that applies to vaping products. Activities include data collection and analysis to understand the scale of illegal products and sales, and market surveillance work. Through this work, they identified that 2.1 million illicit vapes were seized across England by trading standards from 2022 to 2023.
To strengthen our enforcement activity, the Government will also provide an additional £30 million of funding per year for enforcement agencies, including trading standards. This increase in investment will help to stamp out criminal activity by boosting the enforcement of illicit tobacco and vapes.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will publish the modelling produced by NHS England which shows that the NHS Dental Recovery Plan will deliver 2.5 million NHS dentistry appointments.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 7 February 2024, we published Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, which is backed by £200 million and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. The plan sets out our actions to improve dental access for patients by helping the sector to recover from the pandemic, as well as actions needed for long-term reform.
Further information on the modelling for the number of additional appointments being delivered under the plan will be shared with the Health and Social Care Select Committee shortly, and also to be placed in the Library.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what steps he plans to take to ensure the (a) independence, (b) impartiality and (c) academic integrity of the counter-extremism centre of excellence.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
The Civil Service code applies to all civil servants. Further details of our work on Counter Extremism will be set out in the usual way.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what recent discussions he has had with relevant stakeholders on the new definition of extremism.
Answered by Lee Rowley - Minister of State (Minister for Housing)
Over the past year, a wide range of stakeholders were engaged to ensure a balance of views on the definitions development. The definition was tested across Government, with practitioners and with subject matter experts.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many medicine supply issue notifications her Department has received in each month since 2017.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are around 14,000 licensed medicines, and the overwhelming majority are in good supply. However, the medicine supply chain is highly regulated, complex, and global and supply disruption is an issue which affects countries all around the world.
The Department’s medicines Discontinuations and Shortages (DaSH) portal was established in October 2020 to collect notifications from suppliers of potential supply issues. Data from before October 2020 cannot be provided as this information is not held. The following table shows the number of supply issue notifications added to the DaSH portal, each month since 2020:
Month added to DaSH | Number of supply issue notifications |
October 2020 | 180 |
November 2020 | 130 |
December 2020 | 90 |
January 2021 | 90 |
February 2021 | 70 |
March 2021 | 60 |
April 2021 | 50 |
May 2021 | 60 |
June 2021 | 130 |
July 2021 | 60 |
August 2021 | 100 |
September 2021 | 90 |
October 2021 | 80 |
November 2021 | 100 |
December 2021 | 100 |
January 2022 | 110 |
February 2022 | 130 |
March 2022 | 70 |
April 2022 | 100 |
May 2022 | 120 |
June 2022 | 140 |
July 2022 | 210 |
August 2022 | 140 |
September 2022 | 180 |
October 2022 | 130 |
November 2022 | 180 |
December 2022 | 110 |
January 2023 | 170 |
February 2023 | 130 |
March 2023 | 140 |
April 2023 | 120 |
May 2023 | 120 |
June 2023 | 130 |
July 2023 | 130 |
August 2023 | 160 |
September 2023 | 110 |
October 2023 | 130 |
November 2023 | 170 |
December 2023 | 140 |
January 2024 | 160 |
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has made a recent assessment of the effectiveness of the regulation of online (a) ordering and (b) delivery of (i) age-restricted products and (ii) bladed items to self-service lockers.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Under the Offensive Weapons Act 2019 it is the legal responsibility of sellers to ensure that age-restricted bladed articles are not delivered or arranged to be delivered to a self-service locker.
The law requires (set out what is expected of online sales of knives and age verification and the requirements on those who deliver) This legislation is enforced by the police and Trading Standards.
We keep the law in this area under close review and the Government has recently taken action to prohibit the sale, manufacture, supply and possession of zombie style knives and machetes, subject to the relevant Statutory Instrument being approved by Parliament.