Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
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 the training provided to GPs on prescribing risk-reducing drugs to women at increased risk of breast cancer.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practitioners (GPs) are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up-to-date and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This activity should include taking account of new research and developments in guidance, such as that produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, to ensure that they can continue to provide high quality care to all patients.
We are investing an additional £1.1 billion in GPs, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.4 billion in 2025/26, the biggest increase in over a decade. The 8.9% boost to the GP Contract in 2025/26 is bigger than the 5.8% growth to the National Health Service budget as a whole, demonstrating our commitment to shifting resources to the community.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
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 merits of establishing a national register to capture and integrate the data of all women at increased risk of breast cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England provides England’s national resource for data and analytics on cancer, rare diseases, and congenital conditions.
The NDRS already serves as a national register for women at very high risk of breast cancer. NDRS curates and quality assures the collected data to ensure sufficient accuracy and completeness. The NDRS works closely with the very high risk National Breast Screening Programme to ensure safe and robust identification of women at very high risk of cancer. The integration of this data within the wider NDRS cancer data infrastructure maximises the use of this data which helps with service planning, evaluation, and improvement, and reduces the fragmentation and siloing that would occur with standalone registers.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure the accuracy of data collected on all women at increased risk of breast cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England provides England’s national resource for data and analytics on cancer, rare diseases, and congenital conditions.
The NDRS already serves as a national register for women at very high risk of breast cancer. NDRS curates and quality assures the collected data to ensure sufficient accuracy and completeness. The NDRS works closely with the very high risk National Breast Screening Programme to ensure safe and robust identification of women at very high risk of cancer. The integration of this data within the wider NDRS cancer data infrastructure maximises the use of this data which helps with service planning, evaluation, and improvement, and reduces the fragmentation and siloing that would occur with standalone registers.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
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 whether Trading Standards services currently have sufficient a) staffing, b) technical capability, and c) funding to enforce the new i) registration and ii) testing regime for vaping products proposed in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill from the point of commencement.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In 2025/26, we are investing £30 million of new funding for enforcement agencies, including Trading Standards, Border Force, and HM Revenue and Customs, to tackle the illicit and underage sale of tobacco and vapes and help enforce the law. As part of this, the Government is investing £10 million of new funding in 2025/26 in Trading Standards. This funding is being used to boost the Trading Standards workforce by hiring 94 new apprentices across England. This will build a workforce tailored to our requirements and increase Trading Standards’ capacity to enforce the new measures in the Tobacco and Vapes Bill.
Once established, the new product registration system will support enforcement agencies, giving Trading Standards better information to help them remove non-compliant products from the shelves quickly and efficiently. This will also give retailers greater confidence that the products they stock and sell are lawful.
We launched a call for evidence in October 2025 which sought further detail on the existing product notification schemes and where registration could go further than current requirements, including testing requirements and fees. The call for evidence closed on 3 December 2025, and we are in the process of analysing the responses. We will consult on policy proposals based on the evidence provided in due course.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that the a) registration scheme and b) testing regime enabled by the Tobacco and Vapes Bill will be applied effectively to i) online and ii) distance sales of vaping products, including those supplied by overseas sellers.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The future registration scheme will apply to all products sold in the United Kingdom, including distance sales and those sold online, regardless of their origin. The scheme will be designed to ensure the highest level of consumer safety and to reassure retailers that they are selling legitimate products. This will support enforcement and build an evidence base on the types of products entering the UK market.
The details of the registration scheme and testing requirements will be subject to consultation. We launched a call for evidence in October 2025 which sought further detail on the existing product notification schemes and where registration could go further than current requirements, including testing requirements. The call for evidence closed on 3 December 2025, and we are in the process of analysing the responses. We will consult on policy proposals based on the evidence provided in due course.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what conversations he has had with Cabinet colleagues to ensure that enforcement against non-compliant vaping products will be effectively coordinated once the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is enacted.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Officials in the Department of Health and Social Care regularly meet with officials from other departments, including HM Treasury, HM Revenue and Customs, the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs, the Office for Product Safety and Standards, Border Force, and the Home Office, as well as National Trading Standards, to share intelligence and ensure a coordinated approach to the enforcement of our rules on vaping products. This coordinated approach to enforcement will continue once the Tobacco and Vapes Bill becomes law.
Furthermore, in 2025/26, we are investing £30 million of new funding in total for enforcement agencies including Trading Standards, Border Force, and HM Revenue and Customs, to tackle the illicit and underage sale of tobacco and vapes, and to help enforce the law. As part of this, the Government is investing £10 million of new funding in 2025/26 in Trading Standards. This funding is being used to boost the Trading Standards workforce by hiring 94 apprentices across England.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what action his Department is taking to ensure that 85 per cent of breast cancer patients start treatment within 62 days of urgent referral.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We will support the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. The Government is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS and is opening up community diagnostic centres at evening and weekends, to help catch cancer earlier, including breast cancer.
The NHS has exceeded its pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments, having now delivered over five million more appointments as the first step to ensuring earlier and faster access to treatment. Between October 2024 to September 2025, approximately 139,000 more patients were diagnosed or had cancer ruled out within 28 days compared to the previous 12 months.
To ensure that the most advanced treatment is available to the patients who need it, and so that patients can be treated sooner, the Government has invested £70 million of central funding to replace outdated radiotherapy machines.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
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 increase clinic capacity to help ensure that urgent breast referrals meet the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We will support the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. The Government is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS and is opening up community diagnostic centres at evening and weekends, to help catch cancer earlier, including breast cancer.
The NHS has exceeded its pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments, having now delivered over five million more appointments as the first step to ensuring earlier and faster access to treatment. Between October 2024 to September 2025, approximately 139,000 more patients were diagnosed or had cancer ruled out within 28 days compared to the previous 12 months.
To ensure that the most advanced treatment is available to the patients who need it, and so that patients can be treated sooner, the Government has invested £70 million of central funding to replace outdated radiotherapy machines.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when NHS England will publish the breast screening uptake improvement plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In 2026, NHS England is planning to publish a Breast Screening Programme Uptake Improvement Review to help improve uptake and address inequalities.
They aim to publish a review of actions taken at a national level by the NHS Breast Screening Programme so far, as well as setting out where the focus will be going forward, to support local services to drive uptake even further.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with Welsh Government counterparts about sharing best practice around increasing screening uptake for breast cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) advises ministers and the National Health Service in the four nations of the United Kingdom about all aspects of screening. The implementation of any UK NSC screening recommendation is a devolved matter.