Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress her Department has made on relieving the financial burdens for same-sex couples receiving fertility treatment.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Funding decisions for health services in England, including in vitro fertilisation (IVF), are made by integrated care boards (ICBs) and are based on the clinical needs of their local population.
The Government published the first Women’s Health Strategy on 20 July 2022, which contained several important changes and future ambitions to improve the variations in access to National Health Service funded fertility services. This includes improving access to IVF for female same-sex couples by removing the additional financial burden they face when accessing treatment. We are working with NHS England to develop guidance for ICBs to assist in their commissioning plans, which will be published in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress her Department has made on delivering the Women's Health Strategy.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Since publishing the Women’s Health Strategy, we have achieved a significant amount of progress. This includes launching a women’s health area and new women’s health pages on the National Health Service website, investing £25m in women’s health hubs, improving access to hormone replacement therapy and boosting research into women’s health. We have appointed Professor Dame Lesley Regan as the first ever Women’s Health Ambassador for England. Dame Lesley is focused on raising the profile for women’s health and supporting implementation of the strategy.
Future priorities will be announced shortly.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether women who have received criminal convictions for (a) non-violent and (b) non-sexual crimes are eligible for NHS fertility treatment.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
There is no national guidance about eligibility for National Health Service-funded fertility treatment based on past criminal convictions. In England, decisions about local fertility services are determined by integrated care boards.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information her Department holds on the number of instances of in-patient sickness owing to food poisoning.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of the number of FTE working days lost due to stress-related absences across the NHS in the year to June 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly data on sickness absence of National Health Service staff drawn from the NHS Electronic Staff Record system. This includes high level categories of reason for absence. It is not possible from this data to identify days lost due to stress, but data is collected and reported for the broader category of ‘stress, anxiety, depression or other psychiatric illnesses’. The data shows that between 1 July 2022 and 30 June 2023, there were 6,110,681 full time equivalent (FTE) days lost to sickness absence which fall in that broader category.
FTE days lost may include non-working days as sickness absence is recorded from the day someone first reports sick until they return to work. Information on the days people were scheduled to work is not held centrally, and so periods may include non-working days. It should also be noted that some trusts provide very few reasons for sickness absence, so figures will be incomplete but the best available.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many FTE working days were lost in each nursing band, broken down by reason for absence, in the year to June 2023.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly data on sickness absence of National Health Service staff draw from the NHS Electronic Staff Record (ESR) system. This includes high level categories of reason for absence. However, this is not detailed enough to see reasons for absence by pay bands. NHS England has therefore created a bespoke report including pay band information, which is consistent with the published data, for the response to this question.
A table is attached which shows how many full-time equivalent working days were available and lost for nurses and health visitors by Agenda for Change pay band and by reason in NHS trusts and other core organisations in England for the period between July 2022 to June 2023. Due to the way they are recorded on ESR, days lost may include non-working days as the system does not record planned or scheduled working days. It should also be noted that some trusts provide very few reasons for sickness absence, so figures will be incomplete but the best available. In a small number of cases, some registered nurses are coded below the recognised Band 5 entry level. This could be due to different factors such as data quality errors often observed within administrative datasets; for example, some health care assistants may be coded as nurses
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of NHS GP appointments in each region were (a) same-day and (b) virtual in 2023.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows, for the period January to October 2023, the percentage of appointments delivered on the same day as booking, as well as the percentage of appointments delivered online:
Region | % of all appointments delivered on the same day as booking | % of appointments delivered online |
London | 45.0% | 1.5% |
South East | 42.6% | 1.3% |
South West | 39.7% | 1.5% |
East of England | 41.9% | 1.1% |
North West | 43.9% | 1.1% |
Midlands | 44.4% | 1.4% |
North East and Yorkshire | 41.3% | 1.5% |
Source: General Practice Appointment Data, NHS England
Notes:
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to her Department’s contract Securing a Diverse Future for the NHS, procurement reference CF-2038900D0O000000rwimUAA, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of the diversity in the NHS workforce.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Health Service has a diverse workforce. Latest data published by NHS England shows that as of June 2023, 27% of staff working in NHS trusts and other core organisations reported being from an ethnic minority group, compared with 18.3% of the United Kingdom’s population as shown in the 2021 Census. Over three quarters of staff working in NHS trusts and other core organisations are female.
However, there is always more that can be done, on these and other types of diversity. The contract ‘Securing a Diverse Future for the NHS’, which is being delivered by The Prince’s Trust, aims to bring people from more diverse backgrounds into the NHS, particularly people from areas of higher deprivation.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make a cost-benefit assessment of the Pharmacy Earlier Payment Scheme.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Pharmacies are paid in arrears for the provision of pharmaceutical services in the National Health Service. The Pharmacy Earlier Payment Scheme was a private scheme that gave community pharmacies early access to their payments for the provision of NHS pharmaceutical services. The scheme ended on 1 October 2021.
In November 2021, the Department enabled early access to payments for all pharmacies. Pharmacies can claim for activity for a given month by the fifth of the next month and will receive payment around five days later.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an estimate of how many patients are being treated on virtual wards for (a) respiratory conditions, (b) cardiology, (c) gastroenterology and (d) infectious diseases.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not held centrally.