Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his timeline is for proceeding with the draft Mental Health Bill.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The Government remains committed to reforming mental health legislation in England and will introduce a Mental Health Bill when Parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of when updated NICE guidelines for endometriosis will be published.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is currently updating its guideline on endometriosis, which will update its recommendations on diagnosing endometriosis and surgical management if fertility is a priority.
NICE expects to publish draft guidance on 31 October 2023. The recommendations will be subject to public consultation until 13 November 2023 with final guidance expected on 19 December 2023.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department provides to GP practices for genetic testing for genetic haemochromatosis.
Answered by Will Quince
Whilst general practitioner (GP) practices are not directly funded to provide genomic testing for haemochromatosis, testing is available for all eligible patients across England through an NHS England centrally funded service. Any patient who is suspected of having haemochromatosis can be referred for testing via their local NHS Clinical Genomic Services (NHS CGSs), a comprehensive clinical genomic and counselling service that directs the diagnosis, risk assessment and lifelong clinical management of patients and their families who have, or are at risk of having, a rare genetic condition.
Individuals should discuss with their healthcare professional, for example, their GP, whether genomic testing is appropriate for them. Their GP will then make a decision whether to refer the individual either directly or via a NHS CGS for genomic testing following clinical review and the relevant genomic testing eligibility criteria.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
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 that patients' level of access to testing for genetic haemochromatosis is consistent with the criteria set out in the NHS Genomics Test Directory.
Answered by Will Quince
Genomic testing in the National Health Service in England is provided through the NHS Genomic Medicine Service (GMS) and delivered by a national genomic testing network of seven NHS Genomic Laboratory Hubs (GLHs). The NHS GLHs deliver testing as directed by the National Genomic Test Directory, which outlines the full range of genomic testing offered by the NHS and sets out the eligibility criteria for patients to access testing as well as the genomic targets to be tested and the method that should be used, it is applicable nationally, providing a standardised approach.
The performance of the GLHs is monitored quarterly through an assurance framework, which ensures all GLHs are operating to national quality standards and identifies and minimises any potential variation, ensuring consistent delivery of the criteria outlined in the National Genomic Test Directory.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to continue to fund the NHS staff mental health and wellbeing hubs beyond 2022/23.
Answered by Will Quince
Staff mental health hubs were established in October 2020 with funding subsequently extended to March 2023. They were funded on a non-recurrent basis using additional funding from Government as a short-term response to the pressure on the workforce from COVID-19. A number of systems across the National Health Service have chosen to continue to fund the work of the hubs. We are working with NHS England to explore how we can ensure all staff can access specialist support when they need it.
The health and wellbeing of NHS staff is a priority. NHS England has developed a range of health and wellbeing support for staff and earlier this year published a strategy to grow and strengthen occupational health and wellbeing services across the NHS. NHS staff can continue to access NHS Practitioner Health, a national support service for staff with more complex mental health needs brough about by serious issues such as trauma or addiction.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to help tackle health inequalities experienced by autistic adults.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
We published our refreshed national autism strategy in July 2021. The strategy was backed by over £74 million in the first year and is aimed at tackling the health and wider inequalities experienced by autistic people through improving understanding in society, reducing diagnosis waiting times and improving access to high quality health and social care for autistic people. We are also updating the Statutory Guidance on Autism to support the National Health Service and local authorities to deliver improved outcomes for autistic people.
Each integrated care board is expected to have an Executive Lead for learning disability and autism who will support the board in addressing the health inequalities that people with a learning disability and autistic people experience.
In January 2022, the scope of the ‘Learning from lives and deaths – People with a learning disability and autistic people programme’ (LeDeR) was expanded to include autistic people as well as people with a learning disability. This programme enables us to build up a detailed picture of key improvements needed, both locally and at a national level, to reduce the inequality in life expectancy for these groups.
In addition, from 1 July 2022, the Health and Care Act 2022 requires Care Quality Commission registered providers to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism appropriate to their role. We are rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism to support this. This training will help to ensure that staff have the right skills and knowledge to provide safe and compassionate care for autistic people, which will play an important role in tackling health and care inequalities.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to make provision for neurodivergent adults to receive advocate support to (a) access health care and (b) attend health appointments.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
We want all neurodivergent adults to be able to access health care when they need it. Advocates can play a crucial role in making sure people’s views are listened to, and that their rights are upheld. The Department and NHS England invested £4.5 million in 2021/22 to carry out a review of advocacy for people with a learning disability and autism in a mental health inpatient setting and to support a number of advocacy pilots and an evaluation of the most effective ways of working. A report on the findings of the advocacy review outlining recommendations will be published in due course.
Health services should make reasonable adjustments to care for people who have a disability in line with the Equality Act 2010. NHS England are developing a Reasonable Adjustments Digital Flag which will show on a person’s health record that they may need reasonable adjustments. Reasonable adjustments can include allowing for advocate support to assist with accessing health care and attending health appointments.
From 1 July 2022, the Health and Care Act 2022 requires Care Quality Commission registered providers to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism appropriate to their role. We are rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism to support this. This training will help to ensure that staff have the right skills and knowledge to provide safe and compassionate care, including how to provide reasonable adjustments, for autistic people, which will play an important role in tackling health and care inequalities.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
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 local authorities do not have specialist autism teams in (a) England and (b) Wales.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Information on how many and what proportion of local authorities currently do not have specialist autism teams in England. The last available data for England was published in the latest Autism Self-Assessment Framework (SAF) in 2018. The SAF was a voluntary data collection exercise, which asked several questions to local authorities in England about how they were implementing the national ‘Think Autism’ Strategy locally. This included questions about whether their diagnosis services were integrated with mainstream statutory services with a specialist awareness of autism for diagnosis or a specialist autism specific service. 81% of responding authorities stated that they had a specialist service.
Each integrated care board is expected to have an Executive Lead for learning disability and autism to support them to deliver care and support for autistic people in their area. NHS England recently published statutory guidance on these Executive Lead roles.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
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 each Integrated Care Service having a specialist (a) allergy service, (b) allergy nurse and (c) dietician.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
No assessment has been made.
Asked by: Sarah Olney (Liberal Democrat - Richmond Park)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his Department's policy to ensure that all general practice clinicians can access readily available training on the signs and symptoms of a brain tumour.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
NHS England is delivering a range of interventions to support general practitioners in diagnosing brain cancer earlier. In April 2020 they introduced the ‘early cancer diagnosis service specification’ for Primary Care Networks (PCNs). This is designed to support improvements in rates of early cancer diagnosis by requiring PCNs to review the quality of their practices’ referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve them.
NHS England is making funding available to embed clinical decision support tools within general practice and give access to a wider range of diagnostic tests. These tools and tests are expected to support the earlier detection of a range of cancers including brain cancer. A brain cancer education module is freely available on ‘Gateway C’, which offers online and face-to-face training on cancer symptoms for primary care clinicians.