Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether a recent assessment has been made of the potential merits of creating an NHS Never Event for discharging newborns home to temporary accommodation without a cot.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No assessment has been made of the potential merits of creating an NHS Never Event for discharging newborns home to temporary accommodation without a cot. A consultation on the future of the Never Events Framework was conducted by NHS England, and ran between 5 February and 5 May 2024. The consultation sought views on whether the existing Never Events Framework remains an effective mechanism to drive patient safety improvement. NHS England will respond to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing targeted support for (a) infant and (b) parental mental health while a family is experiencing homelessness.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As part of NHS England’s Maternity and Neonatal Three-Year Delivery Plan, NHS England is working to rollout Maternal Mental Health Services for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to loss or trauma in the maternity or neonatal context. This may include those who experience post-traumatic stress disorder following birth trauma, perinatal loss, or severe fear of childbirth, known as tokophobia.
As of February 2024, 39 Maternal Mental Health Services have been established, which provide psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to their maternity experience. Every integrated care system area will soon have these services in place.
In December 2023, NHS England published new guidance for general practice (GPs) on the postnatal appointment women should be offered six to eight weeks after giving birth. This provides an important opportunity for GPs to listen to women in a discrete, supportive environment.
We also continue to engage with a number of other departments and representative groups to discuss what can be done to mitigate the effect of housing insecurity and homelessness on mental health and wellbeing.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
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 promote parental mental health (a) during pregnancy and (b) in the first two years of infancy.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As part of NHS England’s Maternity and Neonatal Three-Year Delivery Plan, NHS England is working to roll out Maternal Mental Health Services for women experiencing mental health difficulties, related to loss or trauma in the maternity or neonatal context. This may include those who experience post-traumatic stress disorder following birth trauma, perinatal loss, or severe fear of childbirth, also known as tokophobia.
As of February 2024, 39 Maternal Mental Health Services have been established, which provide psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to their maternity experience. Every integrated care system area will soon have these services in place.
In December 2023, NHS England published new guidance for general practices (GPs) on the postnatal appointment women should be offered six to eight weeks after giving birth. This provides an important opportunity for GPs to listen to women in a discrete, supportive environment.
The guidance asks family doctors to provide personalised postnatal care for the mother’s physical and mental health, and to support them with family planning. This will include information and resources on assessing and addressing mental health needs and importantly sets out practical initiatives to improve access, experience, and outcomes.
Through the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme, £100 million is being invested in bespoke perinatal mental health and parent-infant relationship support for the 1,001 critical days from pregnancy to a baby’s second birthday, in 75 local authority areas in England.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the number of children that have lost their place on waiting lists for health and care services as a result of relocating out of area due to housing pressures, in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is important that the correct start date is captured for patients who transfer from a referral to treatment (RTT) pathway between providers. For patients that move between different areas of England and transfer to a new provider, including children who may relocate out of an area due to housing pressures, there is an established Inter Provider Transfer process which ensures that the patient is transferred with the same RTT clock start date, so that the new provider considers the amount of time the patient has already waited. This is detailed in Section 11.3 of NHS England’s Recording and reporting RTT waiting times for consultant-led elective care guidance, which is available at the following link:
Data on the number of children that have lost their place on waiting lists for health and care services as a result of relocating out of area due to housing pressures is not collected, therefore no estimate has been made.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
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 support NHS England to facilitate negotiating a better price for the drug trastuzumab deruxtecan.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England is responsible for negotiating commercial agreements with individual companies, and the Department encourages companies to come forward with proposals that represent value to the taxpayer. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published final draft guidance for appeal on the use of trastuzumab deruxtecan for the treatment of HER2-low metastatic or unresectable breast cancer after chemotherapy, and was unable to recommend it as a clinically and cost effective use of National Health Service resources at the price offered by the company. Following extensive discussions through late 2023 and into 2024, NHS England is no longer engaged in any active commercial negotiations on this topic, but remains available to work with the NICE, should AstraZeneca and Daiichi Sankyo be willing to offer trastuzumab deruxtecan at a price that represents value to the NHS.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
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 the time taken to diagnose people with bipolar disorder.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The NHS Long Term Plan commits to investing £2.3 billion extra funding a year in expanding and transforming mental health services by March 2024, enabling an extra two million people, including people with bipolar disorder, to be treated by mental health services within the National Health Service.
Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are also expanding community mental health services. This includes new integrated community models for adults with severe mental illness including bipolar disorder. These new models are still in the early stages, and will take time to embed nationally, but will give at least 370,000 adults greater choice and control over their care and support them to live well in their communities by March 2024.
The Department also provided an additional £500 million in 2021/22 to accelerate our expansion plans and help address waiting times for mental health services. The NHS is also working towards implementing five new waiting time standards for people requiring mental healthcare in both accident and emergency and in the community, to ensure timely access to the most appropriate, high-quality support.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
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 ensure that implementation of the suicide prevention strategy will take into account the needs of people with bipolar.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The new suicide prevention strategy for England is a five-year strategy which sets out the Government’s ambition for suicide prevention. It is a multi-sector and cross-government suicide strategy, with actions from a wide range of organisations that will be delivered over the next few years. The Department has established a £10 million Suicide Prevention Grant Fund to run from 2023 to March 2025 to support voluntary, community or social enterprise organisations, including those who support people with bipolar, to deliver suicide prevention activity.
The Department, alongside NHS England, intends to explore opportunities to improve the quality of care for patients with mental health diagnoses and ensure compliance with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines. This includes patients diagnosed with affective disorders, including depression and bipolar, who accounted for 42% of all patient suicides in England between 2010 and 2020.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to make financial support available for patients with (a) avoidant restrictive food intake disorder and (b) other eating disorders to help with the cost of living.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We have no plans to do so. Information on the support available to help with the cost of living is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/cost-of-living
We have increased investment in children and young people's community eating disorder services every year, with this funding growing by £54 million in 2023/24. Over the five years from 2019/20, we will have also invested an extra £1 billion in community mental health care for adults with severe mental illness, including eating disorders, giving 370,000 more adults greater choice and control over their care and supporting them to live well in their communities.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
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 entitled Fit for the Future, published by the Royal College of General Practitioners in May 2023, whether he is taking steps to (a) increase the amount of space available for GP surgeries to operate in under current conditions and (b) secure additional space for training GPs in the future; and whether he is taking steps with Cabinet colleagues to increase the level of funding available for upgrading NHS premises.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Government has allocated over £4 billion annually in capital funding to systems to invest in maintaining the National Health Service estate and address safety issues. In addition, in our primary care recovery plan we committed to changing local authority planning guidance to raise the profile of primary care facilities when planners are considering how developer contributions and funds from new housing developments are allocated.
We want general practitioners (GPs) to deliver the best quality of care to patients and will continue our work to assess what is needed to enable them to deliver services effectively in GP premises. As part of the ambitions set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan and the planned recruitment drive, we will consider the best use of GP premises to meet the needs of growing and ageing populations and the expanding healthcare teams needed to support them.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford and Eccles)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to include proposals to tackle the socioeconomic causes of health inequalities in the Major Conditions Strategy.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Strategy’s approach will be rooted in the best understanding of the evidence to tackle the major conditions which contribute to the burden of disease in England, namely Cancers; Cardiovascular diseases, including stroke and diabetes; Chronic respiratory diseases; Dementia; Mental ill health and Musculoskeletal disorders.
These areas account for around 60% of total Disability Adjusted Life Years in England. Tackling them is critical to achieving our manifesto commitment of gaining five extra years of Healthy Life Expectancy by 2035, and our levelling up mission to narrow the gap in Healthy Life Expectancy in the least and most deprived areas by 2030 which should take account of socio-economic factors.