Asked by: Steve Rotheram (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department has taken to support research into mesothelioma.
Answered by George Freeman
The Government agrees that more mesothelioma research is needed and has taken measures to stimulate an increase in the level of research activity.
Patients, carers, clinicians and funders have worked in partnership to identify what the priorities in research are. Following a survey and a workshop, the top 10 mesothelioma research priorities were announced in December 2014. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) published a final report from the Priority Setting Partnership in July 2015. In advance of the identification of research questions by this partnership, the NIHR highlighted to the research community that it wanted to encourage research applications in mesothelioma.
The NIHR subsequently invited researchers to apply for mesothelioma research funding, in particular to address the research questions identified through the partnership. Eight NIHR programmes participated in this themed call. Fifteen individual applications were received, of which two have been approved for funding.
In addition, the NIHR Research Design Service continues to be able to help prospective applicants develop competitive research proposals. This service is well-established and has
10 regional bases across England. It supports researchers to develop and design high-quality proposals for submission to NIHR itself and also to other national, peer-reviewed funding competitions for applied health or social care research.
The National Cancer Research Institute is facilitating ongoing dialogue between relevant research funders on the topic of mesothelioma, to discuss what the barriers to research are and what is needed to stimulate research in the field.
The Chancellor’s Budget Report committed £5 million of LIBOR fines over the next four years for the National Mesothelioma Centre.
The Department has received recent representations relating to funding of mesothelioma research from the Asbestos Victims Support Groups’ Forum UK and from several hon. Members on behalf of constituents.
Asked by: Steve Rotheram (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to reduce GP appointment waiting times.
Answered by Alistair Burt
With NHS England, we are making changes to provide more flexibility for practices to meet the needs of patients. We have invested £175 million via the GP Access Fund to commission 57 schemes across the country. In total 18 million patients in 2,500 practices have benefited from improved access to general practice.
The GP Access Fund is promoting greater innovation in how practices offer access. This could be, for example, through networks of practices offering shared clinics at evenings and weekends.
The first independent report on the national evaluation of wave one schemes looked at how schemes have provided more general practitioner appointments and expanded the type of patient appointments to improve patient and staff satisfaction. A second national evaluation report will be published soon with updated results.
Asked by: Steve Rotheram (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether his Department has made an assessment of (a) the number of potential closures of and (b) the reduction in community pharmacies as a result of proposed reductions in funding to such pharmacies.
Answered by Alistair Burt
Community pharmacy is a vital part of the National Health Service and can play an even greater role. In the Spending Review the Government re-affirmed the need for the NHS to deliver £22 billion in efficiency savings by 2020/21 as set out in the NHS’s own plan, the Five Year Forward View. Community pharmacy is a core part of NHS primary care and has an important contribution to make as the NHS rises to these challenges. The Government believes efficiencies can be made without compromising the quality of services or public access to them. Our aim is to ensure that those community pharmacies upon which people depend continue to thrive and so we are consulting on the introduction of a Pharmacy Access Scheme, which will provide more NHS funds to certain pharmacies compared to others, considering factors such as location and the health needs of the local population.
We are not able to assess which pharmacies may close because we do not know the financial viability of individual businesses or the extent to which they derive income from services commissioned locally by the NHS or local authorities or have non-NHS related income.