Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GP vacancies there are in (a) Witham constituency and (b) Essex.
Answered by Steve Brine
The number of general practitioner (GP) vacancies in Witham constituency and Essex is not collected or held centrally. This data is only published at a national level.
Mid Essex Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), has advised that it recognises that GP availability is challenging and it has therefore funded recruitment of other clinical roles in primary care, such as paramedics, to support practices in Witham and elsewhere.
Getting the skills mix right in general practice is critical in addressing workload pressures as well as in delivering appropriate patient care. This will mean bigger teams of staff, providing a wider range of care options for patients and freeing up more time for GPs to focus on those with more complex needs. The CCG has advised that it is working with its member practices, including those in Witham, to reflect this national priority. Practices have the discretion within their contracts to decide the staff skill mix required to meet their patient populations’ needs.
The CCG and colleagues across the Mid and South Essex Sustainability and Transformation Partnership have advised they are also focusing on European Union and international GP recruitment and are supporting GPs in accessing the GP retention scheme. They have also advised that they are supporting the development of the School of Medicine at Anglia Ruskin University and are working in partnership with the Essex Primary Care Inter-professional Centre around a localised clinical recruitment service called Essex Primary Care Careers.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Government announcement of 21 November 2018 entitled New funding for primary and community healthcare by 2023-24 under the NHS Long Term Plan, how much of that funding will be allocated to support the development of multi-disciplinary healthcare centres.
Answered by Steve Brine
On 21 November 2018, the Prime Minister announced investment in primary and community healthcare worth an additional £3.5 billion a year in real terms by 2023/4 and a commitment to ensure a growing share of overall National Health Service spending for primary medical and community healthcare.
Allocation of the £3.5 billion of new funding is currently under consideration. The long-term plan is due to be published later this year with allocations for individual clinical commissioning groups expected to be determined early in the new year.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Government announcement of 21 November 2018 entitled New funding for primary and community healthcare by 2023-24 under the NHS Long Term Plan, how much of that funding will be made available to (a) Mid-Essex Clinical Commissioning Group and (b) North East Essex Clinical Commissioning Group.
Answered by Steve Brine
On 21 November 2018, the Prime Minister announced investment in primary and community healthcare worth an additional £3.5 billion a year in real terms by 2023/4 and a commitment to ensure a growing share of overall National Health Service spending for primary medical and community healthcare.
Allocation of the £3.5 billion of new funding is currently under consideration. The long-term plan is due to be published later this year with allocations for individual clinical commissioning groups expected to be determined early in the new year.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Government announcement of 21 November 2018 entitled New funding for primary and community healthcare by 2023-24 under the NHS Long Term Plan, how he plans to allocate the £3.5 billion of new funding up to 2023-24.
Answered by Steve Brine
On 21 November 2018, the Prime Minister announced investment in primary and community healthcare worth an additional £3.5 billion a year in real terms by 2023/4 and a commitment to ensure a growing share of overall National Health Service spending for primary medical and community healthcare.
Allocation of the £3.5 billion of new funding is currently under consideration. The long-term plan is due to be published later this year with allocations for individual clinical commissioning groups expected to be determined early in the new year.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he has taken to ensure support for ambulance trusts during winter 2018-19.
Answered by Steve Barclay
I have been engaging with NHS Improvement, NHS England and the ambulance service to support improved ambulance performance.
To help meet pressures this winter and beyond, on 6 July we announced £36.3 million of investment in the ambulance service that will be used to purchase 256 state-of-the art ambulances at five ambulance trusts, and to develop vehicle preparation hubs in the East of England and Yorkshire, which will see specialist staff quickly restock, refuel and clean ambulances, getting them back on the road faster.
Additionally, following a rigorous independent evaluation, we have introduced an improved national performance framework for ambulances. These changes prioritise responses to the sickest patients, while helping to reduce long waits for ambulance responses; ensure patients receive the response they need, first time; and improve the efficiency and resilience of the ambulance service in the face of rising demand.
Challenged ambulance trusts, including the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust (EEAST), are receiving tailored support to meet the new national response time standards. This includes comprehensive cross-system reviews led by regional directors, and the implementation of performance improvement plans. Further actions to deliver improvement at EEAST include additional funding for 330 new staff and 160 new ambulances, alongside the implementation of recommendations from the recently published governance review of the Trust. This will ensure the Trust has appropriate capacity and governance processes in place to meet demand and deliver high quality ambulance responses to patients.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has received complaints from abattoir businesses on the effect on their businesses of the conduct of Food Standards Agency inspectors.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has a comprehensive complaints procedure in place. Complaints will ordinarily be addressed at local level in the first instance which is an arrangement designed to achieve a resolution at the closest point to delivery. Where a complainant is not satisfied with the local response they can refer the matter to the FSA’s Complaints Co-ordinator who will re-examine the case from an independent perspective. Thereafter, if the complainant remains dissatisfied they can refer their case to the FSA’s Chief Executive for final review.
Each year the FSA receives a small number of complaints from abattoir businesses about the conduct of employed or contracted Meat Hygiene Inspectors and/or Official Veterinarians. Set within a context of the FSA having a permanent presence in such establishments the number of complaints received each year is low and typically involve matters relating to regulatory decisions, how such officials have interacted with the complainant, timekeeping or other.
Between January 2017 and May 2018, the FSA processed 12 official complaints made by abattoir businesses about the conduct of employed or contracted Meat Hygiene Inspectors or Official Veterinarians. Of these, four cases were upheld or partially upheld and two cases are ongoing.
The FSA is not aware of any such complaints being made directly to the Secretary of State for Health in 2017 or the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care since January 2018.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
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 work with international health organisations to ensure that best practice is shared on stem cell donation.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department provides financial support to NHS Blood and Transplant and Anthony Nolan to enable improved provision of stem cells for patients requiring a transplant including funding for targeted efforts to recruit people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds to the United Kingdom register. This funding has enabled the establishment of a unified stem cell registry for the UK, the ‘Anthony Nolan and the NHS Stem Cell Registry’.
Each of the UK’s stem cell registries that collectively form the ‘Anthony Nolan and the NHS Stem Cell Registry’ is a member of the World Marrow Donor Association – a group of organisations and individuals who promote global collaboration and best practices for the benefit of stem cell donors and transplant patients.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to provide support for projects that work with international stem cell donor banks to diversify the UK's donor register and give patients the best chance of survival.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department provides financial support to NHS Blood and Transplant and Anthony Nolan to enable improved provision of stem cells for patients requiring a transplant including funding for targeted efforts to recruit people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds to the United Kingdom register. This funding has enabled the establishment of a unified stem cell registry for the UK, the ‘Anthony Nolan and the NHS Stem Cell Registry’.
Each of the UK’s stem cell registries that collectively form the ‘Anthony Nolan and the NHS Stem Cell Registry’ is a member of the World Marrow Donor Association (WMDA) – a group of organisations and individuals who promote global collaboration and best practices for the benefit of stem cell donors and transplant patients.
The WMDA’s ‘Search & Match Service’ is a global database of life-saving donors that provides a fast search facility to find the best matched donor or cord blood unit in the world for a patient in need of a blood stem cell transplant.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to encourage BAME people to register as stell cell donors.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department funds Anthony Nolan and NHS Blood and Transplant to improve equity of access to unrelated donor stem cell transplantation for Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) patients through targeted recruitment to the Anthony Nolan and the NHS Stem Cell Registry.
More than £20 million has been provided to NHS Blood and Transplant and Anthony Nolan for stem cell donation since 2015, and this funding includes very specific stipulations about the numbers of newly registered bone marrow donors, and the proportion umbilical cords stored in the United Kingdom Cord Blood Bank that must be from BAME backgrounds (35-40%).
In 2016 NHS Blood and Transplant began a partnership with Team Margot and launched the Golden Ticket campaign. This project created 35,000 Golden Tickets which were circulated to existing BAME and mixed-race blood donors to encourage them to sign on to the stem cell donor register.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will bring forward legislative proposals to extend regulations on mercury dental fillings so that their use is prohibited for all dental patients.
Answered by Steve Brine
In 2017, European Union Member States adopted Regulation 2017/852 on Mercury, in order to enable the EU’s ratification of the United Nations Minamata Convention on Mercury.
The provisions of this Regulation directly applied to the United Kingdom as a Member State from 1 January 2018. Regulation 2017/852 can be found at the following link:
https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:32017R0852&from=EN
There are no plans to introduce new UK legislation to limit further the use of dental amalgam in certain groups of dental patients.