Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what consideration he has given to including prehabilitation and rehabilitation as core elements of cancer treatment in the forthcoming National Cancer Plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is working with NHS England to support local systems to deliver effective rehabilitation and prehabilitation services. The National Cancer Plan will aim to improve how the physical and psychosocial needs of people with cancer can be met, with a focus on personalised care to improve quality of life. It will address how the experience of care can be improved for those diagnosed, treated, and living with and beyond cancer.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
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 impact on child development outcomes of not matching Start for Life funding with the expansion of Best Start Family Hubs.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to delivering the 10-Year Health Plan ambition to match Healthy Babies, formerly Start for Life, to Best Start Family Hubs over the next decade.
There is strong evidence that the 1,001 days from pregnancy to the age of two years old set the foundations for our cognitive, emotional, and physical development. Supporting babies and their families in this period provides an opportunity to improve health and education outcomes and reduce inequalities, including on Early Years Foundation Stage domains.
We have already started to deliver the shift from treatment to prevention by providing funding to 75 areas to deliver universal, prevention-focussed Healthy Babies services. From April, the Government is rolling out Best Start Family Hubs to all local authorities, backed by over £500 million to reach up to half a million more children and families. This funding will help embed hubs within a wider support system, including integrated child health services, and will enable proactive identification and support for health issues and early developmental delays.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 December 2025 to Question 93697, what the average time taken was by the UK National Screening Committee to evaluate proposals for additions to the newborn screening programme; and what steps he is taking to reduce the time taken for decision-making on rare disease screening.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The process from a proposal to screen newborns for a condition, to a decision whether to roll out a national screening programme is multi staged, and the time taken will vary from one condition to the next. This includes procuring evidence products, securing funding, decision on whether to proceed to another evidence product, modelling if required, and evaluation in the National Health Service if needed.
The time for assessment depends entirely on the amount of evidence available and the ability of the screening team to commission and receive evidence reviews. A routine assessment for screening for a new bloodspot condition can take anything from a few months from an open call request to a published evidence map through to one to two years if there is evidence and modelling is required.
A recent example is the implementation of screening for tyrosinaemia in the NHS Newborn Blood Spot Screening Programme, where work began over five years ago. Another example is newborn screening for spinal muscular atrophy where planning for an in-service evaluation is ongoing, and the first evidence review was over seven years ago.
The United Kingdom is not an outlier in terms of the time between first consideration of a proposal to roll out of a programme. France and The Netherlands are estimated to take approximately 10 years.
Reviewing the case for screening for rare conditions can be difficult due to a lack of good quality evidence. The UK National Screening Committee has started to use disease, clinical effectiveness and cost effectiveness modelling to estimate the effects of screening and inform its recommendations, including its recent recommendation to introduce newborn screening for tyrosinaemia.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 December 2025 to Question 93697, whether he has made an estimate of the differences in the number of conditions screened for in newborns between the UK and other countries such as Norway, Australia, Italy, Poland, and the Netherlands; and how those differences relate to the internationally recognised criteria used by the UK National Screening Committee.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Screening programmes in the United Kingdom have a more rigorous approach towards evaluating the benefits and harms of screening compared to many other countries such as the United States of America and Italy.
The independent UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC), which is made up of leading medical and screening experts, advises Ministers in all four nations of the UK on the evidence on screening. Where the Committee is confident that screening provides more good than harm, they recommend a screening programme.
Some countries often cited as screening more conditions than the UK are not always running national programmes. Some countries or regions screen for a condition when it is only at the pilot or research stage. Some ‘screening programmes’ just test for a condition rather than being end-to-end quality-assured programmes that include diagnosis, treatment and care. And screening in some countries is delivered regionally, or even just by individual hospitals, rather than nationally. They are therefore not directly comparable to the national screening programmes offered in the UK.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 December 2025 to Question 93697, if he will meet with representatives of ArchAngel MLD Trust, the MPS Society, MLD Support UK, the LSD Collaborative, and Alex – The Leukodystrophy Charity before responding to the UK National Screening Committee’s forthcoming recommendation on Metachromatic Leukodystrophy.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
My rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, will carefully consider a UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) recommendation on metachromatic leukodystrophy when it is presented to him, before making a decision. The Secretary of State will ask officials to meet with representatives of ArchAngel MLD Trust, the MPS Society, MLD Support UK, the LSD Collaborative, and Alex – The Leukodystrophy Charity.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 2 December 2025 to Question 93697, whether he has made an estimate of the number of (a) preventable deaths and (b) cases of irreversible disability in children with Metachromatic Leukodystrophy over the last ten years; and how such outcomes are considered in UK National Screening Committee evaluations.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
When evaluating the evidence relating to a health condition such as metachromatic leukodystrophy (MLD), the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) considers important issues relating to the condition, the test, the treatment and the effectiveness of a screening programme. Considerations of the condition include reviewing the evidence of its frequency and/or severity, prevalence and incidence.
My rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, is advised by the UK NSC on the evidence on screening. The Committee, which is independent and made up of leading medical and screening experts, advises Ministers in all four nations of the United Kingdom. Where the Committee is confident that screening provides more good than harm, they recommend a screening programme.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
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 impact of not extending Start for Life funding to all councils delivering Best Start Family Hubs on (i) the developmental domains assessed in the Early Years Foundation Stage profile and (ii) the government’s commitment to shift from treatment to prevention.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are committed to delivering the 10-Year Health Plan ambition to match Healthy Babies, formerly Start for Life, to Best Start Family Hubs over the next decade.
There is strong evidence that the 1,001 days from pregnancy to the age of two years old set the foundations for our cognitive, emotional, and physical development. Supporting babies and their families in this period provides an opportunity to improve health and education outcomes and reduce inequalities, including on Early Years Foundation Stage domains.
We have already started to deliver the shift from treatment to prevention by providing funding to 75 areas to deliver universal, prevention-focussed Healthy Babies services. From April, the Government is rolling out Best Start Family Hubs to all local authorities, backed by over £500 million to reach up to half a million more children and families. This funding will help embed hubs within a wider support system, including integrated child health services, and will enable proactive identification and support for health issues and early developmental delays.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions his Department has had with the Department for Education on supporting small healthcare professions whose training courses may be financially unviable despite being essential to NHS and community healthcare delivery.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department of Health and Social Care works closely with the Department for Education to support the availability of a diverse range of training routes into health and care careers. While the Government is committed to ensuring sustainable training pathways for small and vulnerable healthcare professions, higher education institutions are independent providers and are responsible for making their own decisions about course delivery and viability.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent engagement his Department has had with the devolved Administrations in relation to the recommendations of The Hughes Report, published on 7 February 2024; and whether any Ministerial-level discussions are planned with the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
While health is predominantly devolved, the Department holds some reserved functions and working together across the United Kingdom on health and social care is ingrained in the values of our National Health Service and social care sector.
The Patient Safety Commissioner’s report covered England-only, however, any response by the Government to the recommendations of the Hughes Report in England will likely have implications for the devolved administrations and their constituents. Engagement between officials across the UK occurs regularly and during an Inter-Ministerial Group meeting on 11 December 2025, the Hughes report was discussed and ministers across the four nations agreed to meet in January 2026 for further engagement.
Asked by: Stuart Andrew (Conservative - Daventry)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average ambulance response time for Category 2 calls was in rural parts of the East Midlands in each of the last 12 months; and how this compares with response times in urban areas in the region.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We acknowledge that ambulance performance has not consistently met expectations in recent years, and we are taking serious steps to improve performance across the country, including rural and semi-urban areas. That is why we published our Urgent and Emergency Care Plan for 2025/26, backed by almost £450 million of capital investment, which commits to reducing ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average this year.
The NHS Constitutional standards for ambulance response time metrics are measured with an average figure as well as a 90th centile standard which means that trusts are held to account for the response times they provide to all patients, improving the performance management of the ‘long tail’ of delayed ambulance responses that we know can particularly affect rural and semi-urban areas. In the East Midlands, the latest NHS England figures show a 22-minute improvement in the Category 2 90th centile response time compared with last year.
We have already seen improvements in ambulance response times for the East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (EMAS). The latest National Health Service performance figures for EMAS show that Category 2 incidents were responded to in 46 minutes and 55 seconds on average, over 11 minutes faster than the same period last year.