To match an exact phrase, use quotation marks around the search term. eg. "Parliamentary Estate". Use "OR" or "AND" as link words to form more complex queries.


Keep yourself up-to-date with the latest developments by exploring our subscription options to receive notifications direct to your inbox

Written Question
Clinical Trials
Wednesday 5th July 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many clinical trial protocols have been awaiting approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for more than (a) 30, (b) 60 and (c) 120 days.

Answered by Will Quince

As of 5 July 2023, the number of clinical trial protocols, initial clinical trial authorisation applications, that have been awaiting approval by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for more than 30 days (31 to 60 days inclusive) is 68, for more than 60 days (61 to 120 days inclusive) is 110 and for more than 120 days (121 days+) is 81. The MHRA publishes this data about its performance on its website every month.


Written Question
Clinical Trials
Wednesday 5th July 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency is taking to reduce the time it takes to assess human challenge clinical trials.

Answered by Will Quince

The Medicines Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is aware that customers who have submitted initial applications and amendments to our Clinical Investigations and Trials team have experienced extended timeframes in some cases and understands how this unpredictability is impacting companies. The MHRA has taken several significant steps to address the extended timeframes for clinical trial approvals. This includes, but is not limited to, prioritising recruitment and training of specialist staff, working with external stakeholders to streamline and improve its processes, and enhancing customer service support and communications. The MHRA regularly reviews and prioritises applications based on public health impact, patient safety and patient need. Unless a human challenge trial application is considered to meet those criteria it is not prioritised over other clinical trial applications.


Written Question
Clinical Trials
Wednesday 5th July 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency expedites human challenge trial applications where a case has gone beyond its 60-day review deadline.

Answered by Will Quince

The Medicines and Healthcare product Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is dealing with queued applications sequentially. However, the MHRA is reallocating work and routinely evaluates applications for their complexity and prioritises applications based on public health impact, patient safety and patient need. This approach applies to all queued clinical trials including human challenge trial applications that have exceeded the 60-day review deadline.


Written Question
Clinical Trials
Monday 26th June 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

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 potential impact of the time taken to conduct clinical trial approvals by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on the UK's life sciences sector.

Answered by Will Quince

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is committed to making regulatory decisions in accordance with statutory timeframes. The MHRA has recently undertaken a significant recruitment exercise to bring on board new specialist staff to increase clinical trial assessor capacity within the Agency. The MHRA are supplementing this new assessor capacity with additional fixed-term resource of appropriately experienced and qualified specialists to support the training and supervision of new staff.

The MHRA continue to develop plans to increase staff capability and expertise, and to review internal processes for efficiencies. To that end, significant progress has been made to draft proposals for how a risk-proportionate approach to clinical trial assessments could be implemented.

Following public consultation, the MHRA plans to reform national legislation to deliver a world-class sovereign regulatory environment for clinical trials that will support the development of innovative medicines and ensure that the UK retains and grows its reputation as a world leading base for life sciences.


Written Question
Clinical Trials
Monday 26th June 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

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 the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency meets its statutory obligation to assess clinical trials within 60 days of notification.

Answered by Will Quince

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is committed to making regulatory decisions in accordance with statutory timeframes. The MHRA has recently undertaken a significant recruitment exercise to bring on board new specialist staff to increase clinical trial assessor capacity within the Agency. The MHRA are supplementing this new assessor capacity with additional fixed-term resource of appropriately experienced and qualified specialists to support the training and supervision of new staff.

The MHRA continue to develop plans to increase staff capability and expertise, and to review internal processes for efficiencies. To that end, significant progress has been made to draft proposals for how a risk-proportionate approach to clinical trial assessments could be implemented.

Following public consultation, the MHRA plans to reform national legislation to deliver a world-class sovereign regulatory environment for clinical trials that will support the development of innovative medicines and ensure that the UK retains and grows its reputation as a world leading base for life sciences.


Written Question
Hospital Beds
Thursday 8th June 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

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 reduce hospital occupancy rates in England.

Answered by Will Quince

As set out in the delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services, there will be 5,000 more beds this year, alongside expanded use of virtual wards with an extra 3,000 virtual ward beds to provide over 10,000 in total by autumn. This is backed by £1 billion of dedicated funding.

We are also investing £1.6 billion over the next two years to reduce the numbers of beds occupied by patients ready to be discharged. This includes establishing ‘transfer of care hubs’ in every hospital ahead of next winter, alongside new approaches to step-down care.

Same Day Emergency Care services will also be in place across every hospital with a major emergency department, helping avoid unnecessary overnight stays in hospital.


Written Question
Ambulance Services: Motor Vehicles
Thursday 8th June 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the policy paper entitled Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services, published on 30 January 2023, what recent progress his Department has made on introducing 800 new ambulances.

Answered by Will Quince

All ambulance trusts have now placed their ambulance orders for delivery in the current year under existing contracts, and tenders have been received for the mental health ambulances which are being evaluated by NHS England.

In total, NHS England expect delivery in 2023/24 of:

- 628 dual crew ambulances;

- 154 lightweight ambulances;

- 40 mental health ambulances; and

- 11 electric ambulances.


Written Question
Air Ambulance Services: Finance
Thursday 25th May 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to provide funding to London’s Air Ambulance Charity to help it maintain air ambulance provision.

Answered by Will Quince

Air ambulances are not directly funded by the National Health Service. However, the Government has provided significant and sustained support to the sector. In 2019, the Department launched a three year capital grant programme which allocated £10 million to nine air ambulance charities across England, of which London’s Air Ambulance Charity and Barts Health NHS Trust received £1,393,552.

In addition, the Department provided £6 million of COVID-19 emergency funding to all 21 air ambulance charities across the United Kingdom, to ensure that each charity could continue to provide their life-saving services during the pandemic. London’s Air Ambulance Charity received £252,500 of this funding.

There are no current plans to provide further funding to the sector which operates through a longstanding and successful charitable model.


Written Question
Disease Control
Tuesday 23rd May 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

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 implications for his policies of comments from Sir David King in the Independent newspaper on the UK's current preparedness for a pandemic.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

It is not possible to predict when the next pandemic will occur or what virus will cause it. Therefore, our strategic approach to pandemic preparedness constantly evolves in response to new scientific information, learning from our response to prior pandemics, responses to other infectious disease outbreaks and rigorous exercising to test our response mechanisms.

The Department is working with the Centre for Pandemic Preparedness in the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to ensure we have a flexible and capabilities-based approach to pandemic preparedness that will allow us to respond to future outbreaks, protect the health of the United Kingdom population, and contribute to minimising the wider societal disruption that pandemics and infectious diseases can cause.

The UKHSA brings together our world-leading public health science and expertise, cutting-edge capabilities in data analytics and genomic surveillance, at-scale testing and contact tracing capabilities to respond to a range of pandemic threats, as outlined in UKHSA’s Science Strategy, published on 16 May 2023. Information on the strategy is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukhsa-science-strategy-2023-to-2033-securing-health-and-prosperity


Written Question
Diseases
Tuesday 23rd May 2023

Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the likelihood of another global pandemic occurring within the next 50 years.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

It is not possible to predict when the next pandemic will occur or what virus will cause it. Therefore, our strategic approach to pandemic preparedness constantly evolves in response to new scientific information, learning from our response to prior pandemics, responses to other infectious disease outbreaks and rigorous exercising to test our response mechanisms.

The Department is working with the Centre for Pandemic Preparedness in the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to ensure we have a flexible and capabilities-based approach to pandemic preparedness that will allow us to respond to future outbreaks, protect the health of the United Kingdom population, and contribute to minimising the wider societal disruption that pandemics and infectious diseases can cause.

The UKHSA brings together our world-leading public health science and expertise, cutting-edge capabilities in data analytics and genomic surveillance, at-scale testing and contact tracing capabilities to respond to a range of pandemic threats, as outlined in UKHSA’s Science Strategy, published on 16 May 2023. Information on the strategy is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ukhsa-science-strategy-2023-to-2033-securing-health-and-prosperity