Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will increase NHS dental funding to improve (a) accessibility, (b) workforce retention and (c) patient outcomes; and what steps he has taken to ensure there is equitable access to dental services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments, and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.
The NHS in England invests approximately £3 billion in dentistry every year. NHS England is responsible for issuing guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) on dental budgets, including ringfences. NHS England will publish planning guidance for 2025/26 in due course.
The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the ICBs across England. For the Boston and Skegness constituency, this is the NHS Lincolnshire ICB.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department has spent on measures to achieve net zero targets in the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the last five years, the Department has not provided ringfenced capital for the National Health Service’s Net Zero targets.
Direct investment in the decarbonisation of NHS buildings and operations is primarily supported by external grant funding. For example, NHS trusts have secured over £1.2 billion for heat-decarbonisation projects under the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme since 2020.
The Department works with NHS England to ensure that NHS national programmes and day-to-day capital budgets support decarbonisation objectives where appropriate.
We have also previously provided capital to improve trusts’ energy efficiency, with associated benefits for carbon reduction. For instance, in 2023/24 we worked with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to invest £40 million in NHS light emitting diode lighting and solar projects through the NHS National Energy Efficiency Fund. The substantial savings from such investments can be directed into frontline services.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many birth defects were reported among children born to couples who are first cousins in each of the last three years, broken down by the nationality of the parents.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government does not hold this data. We continue to work with the National Health Service as it delivers its three-year maternity and neonatal plan to grow our maternity workforce, develop a culture of safety, and ensure that women and babies receive safe, personalised, and compassionate care.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much (a) United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust and (b) Lincolnshire Community Health Services spent on (i) translation and (ii) interpretation services in each of the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the amount of money United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust spent on translation and interpretation services each of the last five financial years:
Year | Total spend |
2019/20 | £158,395.00 |
2020/21 | £127,235.96 |
2021/22 | £162,501.32 |
2022/23 | £204,008.60 |
2023/24 | £248,547.00 |
In addition, the following table shows the amount of money Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust spent on translation and interpretation services in each of the last five financial years:
Year | Total spend |
2019/20 | £34,638 |
2020/21 | £43,790 |
2021/22 | £56,512 |
2022/23 | £71,885 |
2023/24 | £42,692 |
During the COVID-19 pandemic, spend on translation and interpretation services reduced due to the reduction in planned activity across the providers’ sites. Since then, providers have significantly increased the number of patients they see and treat, which has resulted in increased interpretation and translation costs.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on (a) the total cost of recruitment fees for employing overseas workers and (b) the average recruitment cost for each overseas employee incurred by NHS trusts in each of the past three years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested on the cost of recruitment fees, the average recruitment cost, and the cost of training for National Health Service staff recruited from overseas is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the cost to the public purse was of training NHS staff recruited from abroad in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested on the cost of recruitment fees, the average recruitment cost, and the cost of training for National Health Service staff recruited from overseas is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much and what proportion of NHS funding was spent on (a) administration and (b) patient care in the latest period for which data is available.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Patient care is too broad a category and could encompass a wide range of spending. We are unable to break this down as it stands. However, the total administration spend for NHS England and the integrated care boards is available on page 177 of NHS England’s Annual Report and Accounts 2023/24, which is available at the following link:
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of NHS staff are (a) qualified healthcare professionals and (b) administrative staff.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the number and proportion of full time equivalent (FTE) staff employed by National Health Service trusts and integrated care boards in England, by broad staff groups, as of July 2024:
| Number, FTE | Proportion |
Professionally Qualified Clinical Staff1 | 713,627 | 53.0% |
Support to Clinical Staff2 | 283,369 | 21.1% |
Administrative and Clerical Staff3 | 250,108 | 18.6% |
Managers and Senior Managers4 | 39,595 | 2.9% |
Other NHS Infrastructure Staff5 | 58,952 | 4.4% |
Other Staff or Those with Unknown Classification | 380 | 0.0% |
Total Staff | 1,346,030 |
|
Source: NHS England, NHS Hospital and Community Health Service Workforce Statistics
Notes:
Further data is available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the cost to the public purse was of (a) training and (b) otherwise integrating NHS staff recruited from abroad in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested on the cost to the public purse for the training and integration of National Health Service staff recruited from abroad is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Richard Tice (Reform UK - Boston and Skegness)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the potential thyroid cancer risk from Mounjaro; when his Department received this information; whether he has made an assessment of the potential impact of the provision of Mounjaro through the NHS on the risk of thyroid cancer; whether the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has requested information from the US Food and Drug Administration on its interim report on this matter of March 2024; and for what reason the risk-labelling for Mounjaro is different in the UK to that used in the US.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) role is to continually monitor the safety of medicines during their use. We have robust, safety monitoring and surveillance systems in place for all healthcare products. New medicines such as Mounjaro, which contains tirzepatide, are more intensively monitored to ensure that any new safety issues are identified promptly.
Thyroid cancer has not been causally linked with Mounjaro or any other medicines that belong to the same therapeutic class as tirzepatide, specifically glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists (GLP-1RAs), and it is currently not listed as a side-effect associated with GLP-1RA medicines in the approved United Kingdom prescribing information, also known as the Summary of Product Characteristics (SmPC).
A recent European Union review conducted by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) included a comprehensive class review of the available evidence related to all types of thyroid cancer, taking into consideration various types of evidence, including large observational studies, literature, clinical trial cases, and post-marketing cases. The EMA reached the decision that the overall evidence was insufficient to establish an association between GLP-1RAs and thyroid cancer. Furthermore, the addition of a precautionary warning to the SmPCs was not agreed upon given the limitations of the currently available evidence, unlike the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approved product information. It is not uncommon for regulators to come to different decisions based on different assessments of risk. This can be due to factors such as differences in patient demographics, usage of a particular medicine in different countries, or differences in inclusion criteria for the product information for medicinal products. The difference in the United States’ labelling, in part, relates to the FDA’s interpretation of the data from animal studies, an area of research that is required for all new medicines prior to approval, and information related to thyroid cancer was added as a precautionary warning. However, the human relevance of the animal data is not known, and this is specified in the UK prescribing information.
A signal of thyroid cancer was not observed in the clinical trials for these medicines at the time of licensing, however it was acknowledged that clinical trials are not usually large or long-enough to observe cancer outcomes. Therefore, based on the need for further exploration of the risk about the human relevance, the pharmaceutical companies for all GLP-1RAs have been requested to assess the risk within a collaborative, long-term post-authorisation safety study evaluating medullary thyroid cancer events using United States cancer registries. The results from this study are not expected for a few years and will hopefully provide further information on this risk. Furthermore, the pharmaceutical companies are also monitoring all thyroid cancer types as part of their ongoing routine pharmacovigilance obligations.
Based on the current evidence, the benefits of GLP-1 RAs outweigh the potential risks when used for the licensed indications. The risk of thyroid cancer with this class of medicines remains under review by the MHRA and all pharmaceutical companies which hold a licence for a GLP-1RA. As part of our continuous monitoring procedures, we work with our international counterparts, such as the FDA, to gather information on the safety of medicines in other countries. When a safety issue is confirmed, we always act promptly to inform patients and healthcare professionals, and take appropriate steps to mitigate any identified risk.