Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to work with local government to deliver a joined-up approach to suicide prevention.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, published on 11 September 2023, is a multi-sector and cross-Government strategy, with actions from a wide range of organisations that will be delivered over the next five years. Suicide prevention is everybody’s business, and a joined-up approach is essential to achieving this. The strategy is a call for action for national and local government, the health service, the voluntary, community & social enterprise sector, employers and individuals to tackle suicide.
We have worked across Government departments to develop this strategy and will continue to do so in order to deliver the actions within it. As part of this, the Government will take a leading role in tackling methods of suicide, collaborating with partners across the world in policy, law enforcement and society more broadly to limit access, reduce awareness, and share research, evidence and lessons learned. We are also working with NHS England and professional bodies to improve suicide prevention signposting and support to people in contact with primary care services.
We are working with the Department for Work and Pensions in seeking opportunities to improve the Government’s role in supporting employers to improve the support they provide for the mental wellbeing of themselves and their employees.
In November 2023 we launched a new nationwide near real-time suspected suicide surveillance system that will improve the early detection of and timely action to address changes in suicide rates or trends.
We are also working together with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and local authorities to explore opportunities for improving data collection and data sharing in all areas.
More generally, we work closely with local government via the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ regional leads network, and we have set out our intention in the strategy to write guidance for local areas to support them to align their own strategies with the national strategy.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
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 hospitals in England have not completed the Government survey of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
All National Health Service trusts responded to the survey and data collection commissioned by NHS England across May and June 2023.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for gender dysphoria treatment.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
It is important that transgender people can access the care they need when they need it. NHS England has increased investment by approximately 130% over the past five years and increased the number of Gender Dysphoria Clinics in England from seven to 12 with the rollout of five new adult gender pilot clinics since July 2020.
NHS England is also taking steps to grow the historically small pool of specialist clinicians working in this field. The United Kingdom’s first accredited post-graduate training credential in gender medicine overseen by the Royal College of Physicians was established in 2020. There is also funding for individual fellowships available for surgeons who want to train in gender reassignment surgery.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for specialist gender identity services for children and young people.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Earlier this year, NHS England announced that the children’s gender identity services provider, GIDS Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, will be brought to a managed close, and replaced by two new Southern and Northern hubs led by five NHS Trusts, which are set to be fully mobilised by April 2024. NHS England plans for there to be a total of seven or eight regional providers supported by a larger clinical workforce once the national transformation programme is complete. This expansion of services will provide improved, more local care to patients, and reduce waiting times for these services.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
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 assessment of the potential merits of moving gender transition-related healthcare into primary care.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Children and adults experiencing gender incongruence require specialist support. NHS England's gender identity services are specialised services, due to the specific clinical expertise required to effectively support people experiencing gender incongruence. The Royal College of General Practitioners has published its advice on this matter, saying that general practitioners (GPs) are not experienced in treating and managing gender dysphoria, noting that is not part of GP training nor part of the GP curriculum.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
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 assessment of the potential merits of changing NHS guidance to allow people aged between 65 and 70 on 1 September 2023 to have the shingles vaccination.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Government’s policy on groups eligible for vaccination programmes is based on the recommendations of the independent expert body, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) and the scope and speed of any rollout is decided between UKHSA, the Department and the National Health Service.
There are no plans to review the age criteria for the shingles vaccine roll out. The current policy is aligned with the expert advice of the JCVI and has enabled the shingles programme to offer a more effective vaccine to more people. As part of the changes the offer has increased to include more of those who are most vulnerable, including anyone who turned 65 before 1 September 2023.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential benefits to patient safety of a national alert system to (a) flag unsafe levels of workload and (b) allow GPs to access additional support.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is for integrated care boards to work with practices to determine appropriate local escalation processes for periods of increased demand. We are working to reduce unnecessary workload and cut bureaucracy for general practice staff by implementing the Bureaucracy Busting Concordat, improving the interface between primary and secondary care, and streamlining the Investment and Impact Fund, and we are building capacity in the system by recruiting larger multidisciplinary teams. There are now over 31,000 full-time equivalent additional primary care professionals in post compared to March 2019.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether steps he is taking to increase the GP workforce.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government remains committed to growing the general practitioner (GP) workforce and number of doctors in general practice and is determined to deliver this as soon as possible. We are working with NHS England to increase the GP workforce in England. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession, and encourage them to return to practice.
To boost recruitment, we have increased the number of GP training places. Last year, we saw 4,032 trainees accepting a place on GP training, up from 2,671 in 2014. The number of training places will rise to 6,000 by 2031/32, with the first 500 new places available from September 2025.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of increasing the share of NHS funding for general practice to shift care into the community.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Long Term Plan committed to increase investment in primary medical and community health services as a share of the planned total national revenue spend in the National Health Service across the five years from 2019/20 to 2023/24. Investment in general practice has grown in each of the last five years for which we have published the investment in general practice report. In 2021/22, which is the latest year for which data is available, we saw a 7.14% growth in investment compared with 2020/21. The full report is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/investment-in-general-practice-in-england-17-18-to-21-22/
The Delivery Plan For Recovering Access to Primary Care, published by NHS England on 9 May 2023, recognised the benefits of moving care closer to home and supported the vision set out in Dr Claire Fuller’s Stocktake on Next steps For Integrating Primary Care. This is backed by a major new investment into primary care services, with up to £645 million over two years to expand the services offered by community pharmacies, helping to take the pressure off general practitioners and providing patients with more options for care.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
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 improve infrastructure for general practices.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We want general practitioners (GPs) to deliver the best quality of care to patients and will continue our work to assess what is needed to enable them to deliver services effectively in GP premises.
The Government has allocated over £4 billion annually in capital funding to systems to invest in maintaining the National Health Service estate and address safety issues. In addition, in our primary care recovery plan we committed to changing local authority planning guidance to raise the profile of primary care facilities when planners are considering how developer contributions and funds from new housing developments are allocated. NHS funding, including for primary care, is determined at each Spending Review.