Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of patients that accessed emergency dental service during the covid-19 lockdown.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Data is not currently available on the number of patients that accessed emergency dental services during the COVID-19 lockdown. Data is collected in the format requested on the number of patients requiring dental treatment. Data is collected on the number of patients see by a National Health Service dentist in, for adults, a 24-month period and, for children, a 12 month period. This data is published every six months. The latest data for the period ending 31 December 2019 is available at the following link:
NHS England and NHS Improvement are responsible for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet local need and as such are responsible for assessments of need. NHS England and NHS Improvement announced on 28 May that NHS dentistry outside urgent care centres would begin to restart from 8 June with the aim of increasing levels of service as fast as is compatible with maximising safety. The letter provided guidance on prioritisation of services to meet need. The letter can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the equity of the level of the Annual Retention Fee practising dentists paid to the General Dentistry Council (a) during the covid-19 outbreak and (b) for the remainder of the 2020-21 financial year.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The General Dental Council (GDC) is an independent regulator and is therefore responsible for determining the level of the annual fee it charges for registration.
On 20 May 2020, the Chair of the GDC wrote to all registrants to advise that the GDC would not be making any changes to its Annual Retention Fee, or introducing an emergency payment by instalments scheme, in response to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The GDC uses the income from fees to carry out its statutory duties. In October 2019, the GDC reduced its Annual Retention Fee for all dental professionals following a strategic review of its operating processes and costs and a public consultation on its three-year costed plan.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
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 the work of the General Dentistry Council during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The General Dental Council (GDC) is the body responsible for the regulation of dentists and dental care practitioners in the United Kingdom and is independent of Government.
The GDC’s Council sets the organisation’s strategy and monitors its effectiveness and efficiency on an ongoing basis. The GDC published its Annual Report and Accounts for 2019 on 18 June 2020. Alongside the retrospective view of the GDC’s performance, in light of the impact of COVID-19, updated information was provided where appropriate.
The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) carries out annual reviews of all the healthcare statutory regulators. The PSA will shortly be undertaking the next review of the GDC for the period 2019-20 with a view to publishing its report later this year. The review will take account of the GDC’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance his Department has provided to dentists on preventing infection during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government is working to support and protect all our frontline National Health Service health and care staff during the COVID-19 pandemic, including dentists. NHS England issued a series of guidance to ensure dental teams safety and their role in supporting the wider NHS and social care system during the pandemic.
NHS dentistry was reorganised in late March along with other NHS primary care services to minimise face to face care to contain the spread of COVID-19 during the peak of the pandemic. Dentists were asked to suspend all routine treatment and instead to offer urgent advice and, where required, prescriptions for antibiotics by telephone. Urgent treatment was made available through urgent dental centres (UDCs) set up in each NHS region.
As of 25 May there are currently over 550 UDCs open across England. Patients are triaged into UDCs by their own dentistry or through NHS 111. The urgent dental centres are expected to provide, where urgently needed, the full range of dental treatment normally available on the NHS.
NHS England and NHS Improvement announced on 28 May that NHS dentistry outside urgent care centres will begin to restart from 8 June with the aim of increasing levels of service as fast as is compatible with maximising safety. A copy of the letter that was published can be found on the NHS England website.
The latest COVID-19 guidance for dental practices can be found at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavirus/primary-care/dental-practice
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
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 reduce increasing levels of obesity.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England (PHE) is working to address excess weight and obesity and support the Government’s aim to halve childhood obesity and reduce the gap in obesity rates between children from the most and least deprived areas by 2030, set out in the Childhood Obesity Plan (2016) and follow up Chapter 2 (2018).
PHE is doing this by working with the food industry on the reduction and reformulation programme to make everyday food and drinks healthier; enabling healthier weight environments, including supporting local authorities to take a place-based systems approach to obesity; supporting the local delivery of evidence-based, effective and sustainable weight management services; and supporting children and families through the use of digital technologies.
The Government recently published recovery strategy, ‘Our plan to rebuild: The UK Government’s COVID-19 recovery strategy’ (2020) reaffirms the Government’s commitment to the obesity agenda going forward. The Strategy can be viewed at the following link:
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
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 mitigate the effect of high levels of obesity on NHS services.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government has outlined steps to halve childhood obesity rates by 2030 through cutting sugar from half the drinks on sale, funding more opportunities for children to exercise in schools, and working with councils to tackle child obesity locally through ground-breaking programmes.
It is also critical to understand how different factors, including obesity, could be disproportionally impacting how people are affected by COVID-19.
Public Health England launched a review into the factors affecting health outcomes from COVID-19, to include ethnicity, gender and obesity. This will be published by the end of May.
As outlined in the United Kingdom Government’s Recovery Strategy, the Government is committed to investing in preventative and personalised solutions to ill-health, empowering individuals to live healthier and more active lives, which will help to mitigate pressures faced by NHS services.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
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 work with the food and drink industry on reducing the sugar and salt content of their products.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England (PHE) oversees the sugar and wider reduction and reformulation programme on behalf of the Government, as set out in chapters one and two of the childhood obesity plan and the 2019 Prevention Green Paper. PHE runs the programme, which includes food and drink industry engagement, to achieve the programme’s targets. PHE monitors and regularly reports on their progress.
In 2019, PHE published its second report on industry progress towards achieving the Government’s ambition on sugar reduction. The report shows a mixed picture of progress for food categories in scope and relevant businesses. Continued progress was reported on drinks that are subject to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy. The report is available to view at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/sugar-reduction-progress-between-2015-and-2018
PHE published the first detailed assessment of progress for the salt reduction programme in December 2018. PHE is now working on the development of revised salt targets as set out in the Government’s Prevention Green Paper ‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’. Further information can be viewed at the following links:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/salt-targets-2017-progress-report
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/advancing-our-health-prevention-in-the-2020s
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how data on hospital admissions classified as obesity-related is recorded in NHS statistics.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Hospital Episodes Statistics use World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases v.10 (ICD-10). Within ICD-10 obesity is assigned as code E66 and this will be recorded on any episode of care where a clinical diagnosis of obesity has been made.
NHS Digital states that obesity codes may be used but not interpreted by the coder and only be coded when a diagnosis of obesity is recorded in the medical record. This means that where Body Mass Index has been recorded in the medical record, it must not be used to assign a E66 code. A clinical coder must always refer to the responsible consultant to confirm the clinical significance of a test result.
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how his Department’s advice for covid-19 and the 2009 H1N1 swine flu outbreak differs.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Initial symptoms of H1N1 swine flu and COVID-19 are very similar, so laboratory tests are required to confirm the nature of the disease.
The advice to protect against H1N1 swine flu is to get vaccinated as there is a suitable vaccination available on the market. While United Kingdom scientists have started testing a new vaccine for COVID-19, to date, there is no specific medicine recommended to prevent or treat it. People are advised to follow guidance set out at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public
Asked by: Royston Smith (Conservative - Southampton, Itchen)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people attended (a) A&E and (b) GP surgeries as a result of illegal drug use in 2018-19.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The number of people who attended accident and emergency and general practitioner surgeries as a result of illegal drug use is not recorded centrally.