Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the trends in the (a) availability of sexual health clinics and (b) waiting times for appointments to see clinicians in those clinics.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government has mandated local authorities to commission comprehensive open access sexual health services, including free sexually transmitted infection testing and treatment, notification of sexual partners of infected persons and free provision of contraception. Local authorities are responsible for commissioning sexual health clinics based on local population need. The location and opening times of sexual health clinics are for local determination.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress has been made in negotiations to revise the NHS England Premises Costs Directions; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Steve Brine
The negotiations, between NHS England and the General Practitioners’ Committee of the British Medical Association, on revisions to the NHS Premises Costs Directions have recently concluded.
The Department is currently preparing revised Directions.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of support available to new mothers with post-natal mental health conditions.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
This Government is committed to improving perinatal mental health services for women during pregnancy and in the first postnatal year, so that women are able to access the right care at the right time and close to home.
The Department is investing £365 million from 2015/16 to 2020/21 in perinatal mental health services, and NHS England is leading a transformation programme to ensure that by 2020/21 at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period. This includes access to psychological therapies and specialist community or inpatient care.
A key element of the programme is to increase awareness and skills across the workforce, supporting better identification of perinatal mental illness, early intervention and consequently improved recovery rates. In addition, there are over 570 perinatal mental health visitor champions. Their role is to support health visitors with the identification and management of anxiety, mild to moderate depression and other perinatal mental disorders, and knowing when to refer on.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of guidance to help staff in GP surgeries recognise loneliness in patients.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The Department and NHS England have not made an assessment of the effectiveness of published guidance to general practitioners around loneliness in patients.
The Department will work closely to support the Minister for Sport and Civil Society in developing the cross-government strategy on loneliness.
A number of existing Department-supported programmes can help to address loneliness, including dementia friendly communities, Dementia Friends, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, the Carers Action Plan and social prescribing.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
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 tackle the effects of loneliness on health.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Loneliness can have a significant impact on physical and mental health.
The Department will be working closely to support the Minister for Sport and Civil Society in developing the cross-Government strategy on loneliness.
A number of existing Department-supported programmes can help to address loneliness, including dementia friendly communities, Dementia Friends, Improving Access to Psychological Therapies, the Carers Action Plan and social prescribing.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
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 medicines approved for patients with thyroid conditions are competitively priced.
Answered by Steve Brine
The costs of branded medicine are controlled by the Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme and the statutory scheme for branded medicines. For unbranded generic medicines, the Department encourages competition between suppliers to keep prices down. In primary care, community pharmacies are incentivised to source products at the lowest possible cost and in secondary care, competitive tenders ensure value-for-money to the National Health Service.
Where competition does not appear to be working, the Department alerts the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). Where the CMA finds that a company has breached competition law by charging excessive prices, it can impose a fine as well as order companies to reduce their prices. In those instances the Department can and does seek damages and invests that money back into the NHS.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
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 treat and support prisoners who are addicted to psychoactive substances.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
NHS England is working closely with Her Majesty's Prison and Probation Service to ensure establishment-level resilience to psychoactive substances, through a co-ordinated approach to both supply reduction and demand reduction.
The UK Drug Misuse and Dependence Clinical Guidelines were recently updated by an independent expert working group, following a public consultation. The guidelines were published in July 2017. The Guidelines require that (as a part of a comprehensive assessment) there is confirmation of use of psychoactive substances and identification of the degree of problem use or dependence. This would usually be followed by abstinence-oriented psychosocial interventions.
The Guidelines are available at:
NHS England is due to publish the revised prison Substance Misuse Service Specification shortly. This specification modernises and updates expectations in relation to the management of individuals with drug-related issues, including specifically, responses to psychoactive substances. The responses range from helping to build resilience to prevent use, management during acute intoxication (including ambulance transfer to acute hospital setting), psychosocial interventions and longer term strategies to prevent and avoid use.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to promote the health benefits of breastfeeding.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Government is committed to supporting breastfeeding through the Healthy Child Programme, as the health benefits are clear for mothers and their babies. We would still like to see more mothers breastfeeding and doing so for longer and are working with our partners including Public Health England (PHE), NHS England and UNICEF to achieve this goal.
The promotion of breast feeding is one of the six high-impact areas for health visiting, with health visitors supporting parents around infant feeding. PHE is working with local services to create breastfeeding friendly communities, with midwives and health visitors promoting best practice, and through the Start4Life campaigns to provide parents with trusted National Health Service advice. This includes the Start4Life ‘Breastfeeding Friend’ (an interactive Facebook Messenger ‘ChatBot’), and the Start4Life website available at:
The latter contains a range of leaflets and resources available which professionals can order for free and provides a dedicated breastfeeding helpline.
PHE and UNICEF UK have developed a toolkit to support commissioning of evidence-based interventions to improve breastfeeding rates across England, including provision of effective professional support to mothers and their families through implementation of the Baby Friendly Initiative in every maternity unit. PHE is encouraging Local Maternity Systems across the country to include plans to increase the number of babies breastfed at six months within their transformation plans.
Asked by: Richard Burden (Labour - Birmingham, Northfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to improve access to (a) health care and (b) social care for the families of disabled children.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Clinical commissioning groups must ensure that they secure health services to meet the needs of disabled children to a reasonable extent. The statutory framework introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014 requires clinical commissioning groups and local authorities to work together to support the needs of children with a special educational need and disability. Commissioners must publish a transparent ‘local offer’ of services available which has been developed for, and with, parents and young people. Since May 2016, Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission have been inspecting local areas on their effectiveness in fulfilling their new duties for children and young people with special educational needs. NHS England is leading work to improve outcomes from commissioning of wheelchairs, including the National Wheelchair Data Collection, and the publication in July 2017 of a new service specification for wheelchair services.
Children’s social care is the responsibility of the Department for Education. All disabled children are regarded as children ‘in need’ under the Children Act 1989 and may receive social care from the local authority. The Children and Families Act 2014 placed a duty on local authorities to assess whether a parent carer in their area has needs for support. A parent carer is defined as a person aged 18 or over who provides or intends to provide care for a disabled child for whom they have parental responsibility. An assessment must have regard to the parent carer’s well-being, must consider whether it is appropriate for the parent carer to continue to provide care for the disabled child in light of the parent carer’s needs for support, other needs and wishes, and must consider whether the parent carer has needs for support.
Local authorities also provide short break services for disabled children, sometimes known as respite care, which also give their families and carers time to do normal things and take rest from care responsibilities. In April 2011, the Government introduced a statutory duty for all local authorities to provide a range of short breaks services, to consider carers’ needs in the design of these services and to publicise them clearly. While responsibility for funding short breaks rests with local authorities, the Department for Education has offered support and challenge and continues to consider how it can best support local authorities who are working to deliver sustainable short breaks provision.