Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 improve early diagnosis rates for (a) children, (b) teenagers and (c) young adults with sarcoma cancers.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
Improving early diagnosis of cancer is a priority for the National Health Service. That is why one of the core ambitions in the NHS Long Term Plan is to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, up from 52%, seen between January 2020 to December 2020.
NHS England’s comprehensive Early Diagnosis strategy is based on six core strands of activity, from raising awareness of cancer symptoms and encouraging people to come forward, to implementing targeted interventions for particular cancer types that we know have previously experienced later stages of diagnosis.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department to prevent the commodification of surrogacy.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The Surrogacy Arrangements Act (1985) sets out provisions to ensure that surrogacy arrangements and surrogacy organisations are not-for-profit and prohibits the advertising of anyone willing to be a surrogate or anyone seeking a surrogate in the United Kingdom.
The Law Commissions of England & Wales and Scotland published a report and draft bill of their review of the surrogacy legislation on 29 March 2023. The report’s recommendations reiterate that surrogacy should continue to operate in the UK on an altruistic, rather than a commercial, basis. The Government is considering the report and will publish a response in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding his Department plans to provide for research into screening for ovarian cancer in financial year 2023-24.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department invests in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas.
The level of research spend in a particular area is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications. The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including screening for ovarian cancer.
However, it is worth noting that the NIHR has funded six research projects into screening for ovarian cancer since 2018, with a combined total funding value of £3.8 million. The NIHR also supports delivery in the health and care system for screening for ovarian cancer research funded by research funding partners in the charity and public sectors.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 help ensure that healthcare professionals receive training on recognising sepsis in children.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
The Government recognises the importance of training healthcare professionals to recognise sepsis in children. In May 2018, Health Education England launched ‘Think Sepsis’ a learning package designed to help clinicians spot the early sign of sepsis in children and infants. This is important as 70% of sepsis cases develop within primary care.
The National Health Service is working with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health and the Royal College of Nursing to develop a single England-wide paediatrics early-warning system for children which will help NHS staff to rapidly identify acutely unwell children and respond appropriately. The aim is to develop a consistent approach and common language to promptly recognise and respond to signs of acute illness which may include sepsis.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 help reduce the price of drugs procured by the NHS.
Answered by Will Quince
The United Kingdom has well established systems for controlling costs and ensuring we get value for money for spending on medicines. The UK has two mechanisms for controlling overall spend on branded medicines: the voluntary scheme for branded medicines pricing and access (VPAS) and the statutory scheme for branded medicine pricing. Both schemes apply UK-wide.
The VPAS caps sales of branded medicines to the National Health Service, with the cap growing by 2% each year. Sales made above this cap are paid back by pharmaceutical companies to the Department.
All new medicines and significant licence extensions in England are assessed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) which makes recommendations to the NHS on whether they are clinically and cost-effective. The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended by NICE within 90 days of a final recommendation being made, and offers a unique proposition for global life sciences companies, as with a single commercial deal a company can have access to a market of over 55 million people.
For unbranded generic medicines, the Department relies on competition in the market to keep prices down. This has led to some of the lowest prices in Europe and allows prices to react to the market. In an international market this ensures that when demand is high and supply is low, prices in the UK can increase to help secure the availability of medicines for UK patients.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what research his Department has (a) funded and (b) commissioned on identifying sepsis in children.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). Since 2018 the NIHR has funded 10 research projects on sepsis in children with a combined total funding value of over £14 million.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the impact of early diagnosis of sepsis in children on patient outcomes.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Government remains committed to improving the prevention, diagnosis, and management of sepsis, including in children. It is recognised that early diagnosis improves outcomes for patients with suspected sepsis.
The NHSE Paediatrics Early Warning System (PEWS) programme board was established to address difficulties with standardised early warning systems in children. It brings together a wide-ranging group of child health experts to look at how the system identifies and responds to deteriorating children in all settings and presentations.
The system to detect early deterioration in children in the in-patient setting is being implemented in 2023/24 across the country. It is named the System-wide Paediatric Observations Tracking (SPOT) as work is also underway to develop the recognition and response to deterioration across all settings, recognising that deterioration may occur in primary and community care, ambulance services, emergency departments and in hospitals.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to help improve genomic testing and care in the UK.
Answered by Will Quince
The NHS Genomic Medicine Service was launched in 2018 to support standardised, high quality and equitable access to genomic medicine across the National Health Service in England. Since then, significant progress has been made to improve genomic testing and care. This includes the establishment of a national network of seven NHS Genomic Laboratory Hubs to deliver testing as directed by the National Genomic Test Directory, which outlines the full range of genomic testing offered by the NHS, including tests for 3,200 rare diseases and over 200 cancer clinical indications.
The NHS now offers several world-leading services. It is the first health care system in the world to systematically offer whole genome sequencing (WGS) as part of routine care, and it has launched a rapid WGS service for acutely unwell children with a likely monogenic disorder and a world-leading National Fetal Exome Sequencing Service.
The NHS also has an important role in delivering a comprehensive clinical genomic and counselling service for patients of all ages and their families, who have, or are at risk of having, a rare genetic and genomic condition, including inherited cancer.
Last year, in October 2022, NHS England published the first NHS Genomics Strategy, ‘Accelerating Genomic Medicine in the NHS’, which outlines the future vision for embedding genomics in the NHS over the next five years.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to provide support to GPs to improve the early diagnosis of ovarian cancer.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
NHS England is supporting general practices (GPs) to diagnose more cancers early by making funding available to embed clinical decision support tools within GPs. These tools are designed to support GPs in clinical decision making, such as whether to refer or request further diagnostic investigation in patients where they believe there is a risk of cancer, and identifying patients who may be at risk based on their symptoms.
In April 2020, NHS England introduced the ‘early cancer diagnosis service specification’ for Primary Care Networks. The specification is designed to support improvements in rates of early diagnosis, including ovarian cancer, by requiring Primary Care Networks to review the quality of referrals for suspected cancer and take steps to improve them.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the suitability of the Jena Triology heart valve; and whether he plans to make it available on the NHS.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The Jena Triology heart valve obtained authorisation for placement on the United Kingdom market in 2021 and meets legal requirements for supply in the country. The suitability of the device is a clinical decision and availability through the National Health Service rests with NHS commissioned care providers.