Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
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 - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
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.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for the Home Department on mental health support services that are available to asylum seekers and refugees.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Officials from the Department of Health and Social Care are working with the Home Office and other Government departments to support access to mental health support services by asylum seekers and refugees.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
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 incorporate mental health support and prevention in the Major Conditions Strategy.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Mental Health is one of the group of conditions included in the Major Conditions Strategy. The strategy will aim to identify actions in the areas of prevention, treatment and long term management of care to improve outcomes for individuals across the six major condition groups.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people were diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in each of the last five years; what types of treatment are provided to such people in secondary care; and how many such people received each treatment in each year.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The information requested is not available due to the limitations of current diagnosis data on within the Mental Health Services Dataset. Only around 20% to 25% of cases in the dataset have a specific diagnosis recorded; any data provided on obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) diagnoses would therefore represent an undercount.
Regarding treatment types, the National Health Service may offer talking therapies and medication, such as antidepressants, separately or together. Talking therapies for OCD may include, but are not limited to, cognitive behavioural therapy, exposure and response prevention, and group therapy.
Procedure data relating to different types of treatment is recorded through the use of SNOMED codes. Not all providers are submitting SNOMED codes for the years requested and as such this incomplete data is not included in the response.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people were diagnosed with mental health issues in each of the last five years; what types of treatment are provided to such people in secondary care; and how many such people received each treatment in each year.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The information requested on mental health diagnoses is not available due to limitations of current diagnosis data within the Mental Health Services Dataset. Only around 20% to 25% of cases in the dataset have a specific diagnosis recorded, and any data provided on diagnosis numbers overall would therefore represent an undercount.
Regarding treatment types, the National Health Service may offer a range of options, including talking and other psychological therapies, medications, arts and creative therapies, social prescribing and specialist inpatient services separately or in combination.
Data relating to different types of treatment is recorded through the use of SNOMED codes. Not all providers are submitting SNOMED codes for the years requested and as such this incomplete data is not included in the response.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the NHS workforce strategy will include provisions for NHS Trusts in England to hire the additional cancer workforce needed to meet the ambition for 75 per cent of cancer patients to be diagnosed at stage I or II by 2028 as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Government has committed to publishing the Long Term Workforce Plan shortly. This will include independently verified forecasts for the number of healthcare professionals required in future years, taking full account of improvements in retention and productivity. The plan will cover the whole of the NHS workforce.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the article in the Health Service Journal entitled Deficit trusts face ‘intimidating conversations’ and orders to hold down staffing, published 25 April 2023, what recent discussions his Department has had with NHS England on reports that some NHS Trusts have been told they are not permitted to increase their total number of staff in 2023-24.
Answered by Will Quince
We are backing the National Health Service with record funding including up to £14.1 billion for health and social care over the next two years. We are also growing the workforce and there are record numbers of staff working in the NHS with over 48,700 more staff compared to a year ago including over 5,100 more doctors and over 11,800 more nurses.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the national NHS Adult Social Care surveys, how many responses to that survey have been received in each year for the past three years; and what the overall response rate to that survey was in those years.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
For the Personal Social Services Adult Social Care Survey published by NHS Digital in 2021/22, 59,770 responses were received from a sample of 220,360 service users, a response rate of 27%. The 2020/21 survey was made voluntary for local authorities to undertake due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Eighteen local authorities took part in the survey and 6,695 responses were received from a sample of 24,700 service users, a response rate of 27%. In 2019/20, there were 62,520 responses from a sample of 213,225 service users, a response rate of 29%.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department will take to consult those affected by bowel cancer on its Major Conditions Strategy.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Major Conditions Strategy will draw on previous work on cancer, including over 5,000 submissions provided to the Department as part of our Call for Evidence last year. Many of those submissions will have included feedback on bowel cancer. We will continue to work closely with stakeholders, citizens and the National Health Service in coming weeks to identify actions for the Strategy that will have the most impact.
Asked by: Rebecca Long Bailey (Labour - Salford)
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 help extend healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
The ambition to improve healthy life expectancy by five years by 2035 and reduce the gap by 2030 remains Government policy. A significant proportion of ill-health is preventable. We are focusing on the major conditions which contribute to early mortality and reduce years of good health and factors such as smoking, poor diet and alcohol which disproportionately impact some communities.
The measures include the ambition for England to be smoke-free by 2030 and addressing obesity through working with the food industry to ensure it is easier to make healthier choices and to increase progress on the reformulation of foods. We will set out more information on plans to address health disparities in due course.