Asked by: Imran Hussain (Labour - Bradford East)
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 to children’s hospices after the 2025-26 financial year.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We want a society where every child receives high-quality, compassionate care from diagnosis through to the end of life.
We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We are also providing £26 million of revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which until recently was known as the children and young people’s hospice grant.
In 2024/25 and 2025/26, this funding was administered via ICBs in line with National Health Service devolution. We cannot yet confirm what the funding for 2026/27 will be, or how it will be administered.
Asked by: Luke Evans (Conservative - Hinckley and Bosworth)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future, published 3 July 2025, how the planned multi-neighbourhood providers covering large geographical areas will improve local continuity of healthcare.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The 10 Year Health Plan sets out our vision for a Neighbourhood Health Service that moves care closer to home. The Neighbourhood Health Service will embody our new preventative principle that care should happen as locally as it can, digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and only in a hospital if necessary.
We will bring together teams of professionals closer to people’s home, including nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors, and more, to work together to provide comprehensive care in the community and improve local continuity of healthcare. We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that meets the needs of local populations.
Multi-neighbourhood providers will facilitate the development of neighbourhood teams, improving access for local populations and supporting the continuity of care for patients in a Neighbourhood Health Service. These providers will cover populations of approximately 250,000 people, to unlock the advantages and efficiencies possible from greater scale, working across all general practices and small neighbourhood providers in their footprint. The introduction of the Single Patient Record will support this way of working, giving neighbourhood clinicians secure access to a patient’s medical records to ensure seamless care across services.
Asked by: Lord Rennard (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what discussions they have held with social media companies on the moderation of pro-eating disorder material and misinformation relating to diabetes and body image.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Under the Government’s Online Safety Act, all in-scope services are now required to protect their users from illegal content, and platforms likely to be accessed by children need to prevent their users from accessing eating disorder content.
No discussions have been held with social media companies. However, we are working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, Ofcom and others as the Online Safety Act takes effect. This includes exploring further opportunities to address harmful pro-eating disorder material and misinformation shared on social media and websites.
Asked by: Luke Charters (Labour - York Outer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the NHS 10 Year Health Plan, what steps his Department is taking to support dispensing general practices.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise that the services of dispensing practices play an important role in meeting the needs of rural communities, by ensuring patients receive their medicines promptly and conveniently.
Every year, the Department and NHS England consult with the British Medical Association (BMA) regarding the services general practices will provide, and the funding they will receive in return for these services. This includes the services, and relevant remuneration, of dispensing practices.
We have committed to substantive General Practice (GP) contract reform within this Parliament following acceptance of the 2025/26 contract by the England General Practitioners Committee of the BMA. As part of this, we expect to consider a breadth of topics, including dispensing practices.
On 3 July 2025, we published the 10-Year Health Plan, which announced the plan to introduce two new contracts, for neighbourhood providers and multi-neighbourhood providers, which will encourage GPs to work over larger geographies. We will begin to make these new contracts available in 2026, and more details will be provided in due course.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 ensure that NHS pay awards are implemented on 1 April each year.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to improving the timing of the pay round as set out in the Chancellor’s speech on 29 July 2024. We recognise the importance of giving certainty on pay settlements as early as possible and are working to be able to announce pay uplifts sooner this round.
Having accepted the 2025/26 headline pay recommendations in full, the Government issued remit letters to pay review boards in July 2025 formally beginning the 2026/27 pay round. This is over two months earlier than last year and puts us on track to meet the stated ambition of my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to announce and implement pay uplifts as close to 1 April 2026 as possible.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to respond to the letter of 10 July 2025 from the hon. Member for Henley and Thame on maternity services.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The letter has been passed to Baroness Amos as chair of the independent investigation into National Health Service maternity and neonatal care, and she will respond directly in due course.
Asked by: Freddie van Mierlo (Liberal Democrat - Henley and Thame)
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 15 July to Question 66814 on Health Services: Oxfordshire, what steps he is taking to ensure that Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust is able to recruit and retain midwives in the context of efficiency savings.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to ensuring the National Health Service can both recruit and retain staff. We recently announced the Graduate Guarantee for nurses and midwives, which will ensure that there are enough positions available for every newly qualified midwife in England, and includes £8 million to support the temporary conversion of vacant maternity support worker posts to band 5 registered midwifery roles.
Additionally, NHS England is undertaking targeted retention programme for midwives, led by the Chief Nursing Officer. This includes: a midwifery and nursing retention self-assessment tool; mentoring schemes; strengthened advice and support on pensions and flexible retirement options; and the publication of menopause policies and guidance. NHS England has also invested in unit-based leads in every trust who focus on retention and provide pastoral support to midwives. This initiative, alongside investment in workforce capacity, has seen a reduction in vacancy, leaver and turnover rates.
Asked by: Charlotte Cane (Liberal Democrat - Ely and East Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has considered introducing multi-year NHS funding for the health elements of children's palliative care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Palliative care services, including for children, are included in the list of services that integrated care boards (ICBs) must commission. This promotes a more consistent national approach and supports commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care. ICBs are responsible for the commissioning of palliative and end of life care services, to meet the needs of their local populations. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.
The Department and NHS England are looking at how to improve the access, quality and sustainability of all-age palliative care and end of life care in line with the 10 Year Health Plan. The Government and the National Health Service will closely monitor the shift towards strategic commissioning of palliative care and end of life care services to ensure that the future state of services reduce variation in access and quality, although some variation may be appropriate to reflect both innovation and the needs of local populations.
Asked by: Ben Maguire (Liberal Democrat - North Cornwall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) doctors completing GP training and (b) available GP posts.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England produces regular forecasts of the numbers of doctors due to complete General Practitioner (GP) training. Latest data show that for 2025/26, 1,964 doctors completed GP training between 1 April and 21 August 2025 with a further 2,733 doctors forecast to complete GP training by 31 March 2026. Estimated completion dates are produced by GP educators based on doctors’ individual progress so are subject to change.
As practices do not have fixed establishment positions against which they report vacancies, we do not collect and publish data on vacancies in general practice.
The Government committed to recruiting over 1,000 recently qualified GPs in primary care networks (PCNs) through an £82 million boost to the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS) over 2024/25, as part of an initiative to secure the future pipeline of GPs, with over 1,000 doctors otherwise likely to have graduated into unemployment in 2024/25. This funding has been continued into 2025/26.
Data on the number of recently qualified GPs for which PCNs are claiming reimbursement via the ARRS show that, since 1 October 2024, over 2,000 GPs were recruited through the scheme. Several changes have been made to increase the flexibility of ARRS in 2025/26. This includes GPs and practice nurses included in the main ARRS funding pot, an uplift of the maximum reimbursable rate for GPs in the scheme, and no caps on the number of GPs that can be employed through the scheme.
Asked by: Lord Mott (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to increase the number of mental health practitioners employed in primary care through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme (ARRS), Primary Care Networks (PCNs) recruit additional staff including mental health practitioners (MHPs), pharmacists, physiotherapists, and social prescribing link workers. There are a wide range of clinicians that are well suited to providing care in general practice as part of a multi-disciplinary team, and these roles are in place to assist doctors in general practice in reducing their workload, assisting patients directly with their needs, allowing doctors to focus on more complex patients and other priorities, including continuity of care.
As of 30 June 2025, there were 1,158 full time equivalent (FTE) MHPs working across practices and PCNs in England, an increase of 314 FTE compared with June 2023, when the time series in the collated data began.
While there are no specific plans to increase the number of MHPs employed through the ARRS, under changes to the GP contract announced earlier in the year the scheme will become more flexible to allow PCNs to respond better to local workforce needs. The two ARRS pots will be combined to create a single pot for reimbursement of patient facing staff costs. There will be no restrictions on the number or type of staff covered, including mental health practitioners.