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.
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.
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.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what progress her Department has made on increasing access to nature through (a) improved maintenance of footpaths, (b) increasing the network of footpaths and (c) expansions of the freedom to roam.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
England already has a fantastic network of paths with some 120,000 miles of linear access through England’s countryside, but we are taking steps to improve this further.
For example, the Bridlington to Filey stretch of the King Charles III England Coast Path was recently opened, connecting thousands of people to the Yorkshire coast. Over 850 miles of the path are now open to the public and, when complete, it will be the longest waymarked and maintained coastal walking route in the world at 2,700 miles.
We are also designating Wainwright’s Coast to Coast route across the north of England as a new National Trail, crossing some of our most precious national landscapes making it accessible to cyclists and horse riders where it is feasible to do so.
We are delivering the £14.5 million ‘Access for All’ programme, which consists of a package of targeted measures in our protected landscapes, national trails, forests and the wider countryside to make access to green and blue spaces more inclusive. More than £3.5 million has already been spent on making our protected landscapes more accessible, including on creating and improving footpaths to ensure that the countryside is accessible to everyone.
We are also improving the way in which rights of way are recorded by implementing a package of reforms to reduce bureaucracy and speed up the process for new rights of way to be added to the legal record for everyone to enjoy. Local highway authorities are responsible for the management and maintenance of existing public rights of way and are required to keep a Rights of Way Improvement Plan to plan improvements to the rights of way network in their area. This must include an assessment of the local rights of way including the condition of the network.
The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 provides for a right to roam across open access land, giving the public a right of access to most areas of mountain, moor, heath, down, registered common land and coastal margin. This means that the public already has the ‘right to roam’ over many areas of wild, open countryside. We have no plans to change this.
We set out our commitment to the provision of safe and appropriate public access in as many woodlands as possible in the England Trees Action Plan. The Environmental Improvement Plan reiterates our commitment to publish our ambition for improving the quantity, quality, and permanency of woodland access.
Through programmes with the Community Forests and Forestry England we are enabling creation of large scale publicly accessible woodlands near towns and cities. For instance, as part of our ‘Access for All’ programme we are providing over £3 million to Forestry England to increase access to green and blue spaces in our most deprived urban areas.
We continue to support land managers to provide woodland access through our Countryside Stewardship and England Woodland Creation Offer schemes.
Under the new Environmental Land Management offer, for woodlands, we are providing societal benefits by bringing people closer to nature, allowing long-term permissive access for recreation and contributing to the rural economy.
The Department for Transport is investing in active travel. This includes delivering thousands of miles of safe, continuous routes for cycling and creating Active Travel England to support local authorities to deliver ambitious and transformational schemes. The Transport Secretary appointed Chris Boardman as National Active Travel Commissioner in June 2022.
This Government has done more than any other when it comes to walking and cycling. Around 250 more miles of walking and cycling routes have been opened since 2020 and we remain fully committed to the ambitious vision that by 2030 half of all journeys in towns and cities are walked or cycled. This is in addition to the objectives outlined in the second Cycling and Walking Investment Strategy (CWIS2).
This Government absolutely understands the importance of active travel. That is why we are investing more than any other government, over £3 billion, into this area. This includes at least £100 million capital funding over the two-year period 2023/24 to 2024/25 for active travel infrastructure, following on from £850 million investment in the three years up to 2022/23.
We also committed in our 2020 Gear Change plan commits to improve the National Cycle Network (NCN), recognising the vital importance of the NCN in enabling everyone to walk, wheel and cycle safely and easily. Last year Sustrans was awarded £25 million to support and expand the NCN.
Active Travel England will work to ensure that this wider funding supports delivery of the objectives in CWIS2 including the need for projects to conform with national design guidance. Active travel remains at the heart of this Government’s agenda and the Department will continue to ensure that it is given the priority it deserves.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she is taking steps to support families with the cost of (a) primary and (b) secondary school uniforms.
Answered by Nick Gibb
New statutory guidance on the cost of school uniforms came into force in September 2022, following publication by the Government in November 2021. The guidance is available at: www.gov.uk/government/publications/cost-of-school-uniforms.
Schools must have regard to this guidance when they are developing and implementing their uniform policy. The guidance requires schools to keep branded items to a minimum, give the highest priority to cost and value for money in their supply arrangements, and ensure that second hand uniforms are available for parents to acquire.
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.
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:
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:
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 decision of VMIC UK Services Ltd to sell the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre on the UK's vaccine manufacturing capabilities.
Answered by Will Quince
The decision to sell the Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC UK Ltd) was made by VMIC UK Ltd's Board of Directors. The facility was subsequently sold to Catalent. Once completed, it is intended that the facility will be capable of producing a range of therapeutics and vaccines.
Over £405 million has been invested to strengthen United Kingdom manufacturing infrastructure to ensure a robust response to COVID-19 and potential future health emergencies and we have ambitious plans to invest more into the vaccine ecosystem and supply chain. Officials continue to engage with industry stakeholders to understand the wider landscape and implications for vaccine development and manufacturing in the UK.
Asked by: Rushanara Ali (Labour - Bethnal Green and Bow)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what financial assessment his Department has made on the effect of the proposed Solvency II reforms on the public purse.
Answered by Andrew Griffith - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The Solvency II reforms strike a careful balance between boosting growth and maintaining high standards of policyholder protection. Insurers will still have to hold enough capital to withstand a 1-in-200-year shock. They will still have to adhere to high standards of risk management and will still be comprehensively supervised by our world-class independent regulator. The Government has announced a suite of additional supervisory measures the PRA will be taking forwards to hold insurers to account in maintaining safety, soundness, and policyholder protection.