Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if her Department will take steps to increase the availability of face-to-face GP appointments in Chesterfield constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
On 22 September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which contains measures to assist people make an informed choice on their general practitioner (GP) practice, book an appointment more easily, benefit from more care options and increase the diversity of general practice teams. This aims to increase the availability of appointment types, such as face-to-face, in England, including in Chesterfield.
NHS England’s guidance states that GP practices must provide face to face appointments and remote consultations and should respect preferences for face-to-face care unless there are good clinical reasons to the contrary. While remote consultations can provide additional choice, flexibility and convenience for patients, this is not suitable for all patients or in all circumstances.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of social care capacity in Chesterfield constituency.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
No specific assessment has been made. Local authorities have a responsibility under the Care Act 2014 to ensure that the care needs of the population are met.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has provided additional (a) financial and (b) other support to help tackle (i) patient backlogs and (ii) increased workloads in GP surgeries in Chesterfield constituency.
Answered by Will Quince
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’, published in February 2022, stated the ambition to reduce patient backlogs for planned National Health Service treatments and the government plans to spend more than £8bn from 2022/23 to 2024/25. We made £520 million available to expand general practice capacity during the pandemic. This was in addition to at least £1.5 billion announced in 2020 by 2024 which includes supporting increased workloads in general practitioner (GP) surgeries, including in Chesterfield. In September 2022, ‘Our plan for patients’ announced measures to support GP practices increase access and manage workloads, such as the provision of 31,000 phone lines and funding to expand the staff roles working in general practice, including in Chesterfield.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 help reduce waiting times for elective surgeries in Chesterfield constituency.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The ‘Delivery plan for tackling the COVID-19 backlog of elective care’ how the National Health Service will recover and expand elective services over the next three years, including in Chesterfield. We have allocated more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund and £700 million Targeted Investment Fund already made available in 2021/2022 to increase elective activity. This funding aims to deliver the equivalent of approximately nine million additional checks and procedures and 30% further elective activity by 2024/25 than pre-pandemic levels. A proportion of this funding will be invested in workforce capacity and training and we have committed to invest £5.9 billion for new beds, equipment and technology.
The target to eliminate waiting times of two years or more for elective procedures was met in July 2022 and we aim to eliminate waiting time of eighteen months or more by April 2023. This will be achieved through increasing capacity, seeking alternate capacity in other trusts or the independent sector and engaging with patients to understand choices made regarding their care.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate her Department has made of the number of residential care homes that have closed in Chesterfield constituency since 2010.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Care Quality Commission records care homes which have closed as ‘deactivated’. Since 2010, two nursing homes and 19 residential homes Chesterfield have been deactivated. The ‘deactivated’ locations exclude care homes where the provider continues to operate under a new, separate registration, which may be due to a change in legal entity or provider.
Some care homes have both types of care home service with nursing and care home service without nursing and in these cases, the home is classified as a nursing home. A residential home is a care home service without nursing.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 19 July 2022 to Question 36694 on NHS Trusts: Apprentices, if he will make it his policy to centrally collect data to assess (a) how much each NHS Trust pays in apprenticeship levy and (b) how much and what proportion of that levy revenue is subsequently spent; and for what reason there is any potential unspent revenue from that levy.
Answered by Robert Jenrick
The apprenticeship levy is paid by individual National Health Service employers which collect and monitor data on expenditure through the levy. There are no current plans to collect this data centrally, given the significant administrative burden this would create for trusts. It is the responsibility of individual employers to ensure the available levy is effectively utilised and where there is underspending, to use the transfer function available.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
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 help ensure hospital maternity services are able to offer home births.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
While all trusts providing maternity services in England offer a home birth service, there is occasionally a need for a trust to suspend home births for operational reasons, such as temporary staff shortages.
In March 2022, NHS England announced that more than £50 million would be provided over the next two years to increase the number of staff in maternity and neonatal services. This is in addition to a further £95 million per year for recruitment and training.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to ensure that the NICE guidelines NG73 on endometriosis diagnosis are updated.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) reviewed its endometriosis guideline in late 2021. The guideline was amended to highlight that those with endometriosis outside the pelvic cavity should be referred to a specialist endometriosis centre. NICE is now undertaking a further review of its guideline on endometriosis to determine whether it should be updated.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary for Health and Social Care, how much each NHS Trust (a) has spent on the Pay Apprenticeship Levy in each year since it was introduced and (b) has spent in total in each of those years.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The information requested is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Toby Perkins (Labour - Chesterfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will take steps to (a) publish guidance and (b) bring forward legislative proposals to help tackle the rising costs for paid carers of attending home appointments.
Answered by Gillian Keegan - Secretary of State for Education
We have no plans to bring forward legislative proposals. Under the Care Act 2014, local authorities have a duty to manage local care markets and should ensure that fee levels are appropriate to provide the agreed quality of care, enable providers to effectively support care users and invest in staff development, innovation and improvement. The majority of care workers are employed by private sector providers who set their pay and terms and conditions, independent of central Government. Local authorities work with care providers to determine fee rates, which should take account of wage costs, based on local market conditions.
However, we have made an additional £3.7 billion available for councils for 2022/23, which includes £1 billion specifically for social care. In addition, we are committing £1.36 billion over three years to the Market Sustainability and Fair Cost of Care Fund to support local authorities to move towards paying providers a fair cost of care. As a condition of receiving funding, local authorities will be required to submit an evidence-based cost of care exercise. This should accurately reflect local costs such as staff pay and travel time. We published guidance for the Market Sustainability and Fair Cost of Care Fund to ensure greater consistency in understanding the local costs and risks to local markets.