Asked by: Danny Beales (Labour - Uxbridge and South Ruislip)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department plans to publish a modern service framework for respiratory health.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Modern service frameworks will define an aspirational, long-term outcome goal for a major condition and then identify the best evidenced interventions and the support for delivery. Early priorities will include cardiovascular disease, severe mental illness, and the first ever service framework for frailty and dementia.
The Government will consider other long-term conditions for future waves of modern service frameworks, including respiratory conditions. The criteria for determining other conditions for future modern service frameworks will be based on where there is potential for rapid and significant improvements in quality of care and productivity.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is the average waiting time for a dementia diagnosis since 2010 in England, broken down by (a) Integrated Care Board and (b) year.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This information is not held centrally.
We remain committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) to the national ambition of 66.7%. The DDR for patients aged 65 years old and over at the end of October 2025 was 66.5%. The rate is an increase of 0.2 percentage points compared to 66.3% in September 2025. This is an overall increase from March 2020 due to sustained recovery efforts.
To support recovery of the dementia diagnosis rates and implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, we have developed a memory service dashboard for management information purposes. The aim is to support commissioners and providers with appropriate data and enable targeted support where needed.
To reduce variation in diagnosis rates, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ Dementia Intelligence Network has developed a tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates. The tool has been released and is available via the NHS Futures Collaboration platform.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what is the average waiting time for a dementia diagnosis since 2010 in England, broken down by (a) local authority and (b) year.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This information is not held centrally.
We remain committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate (DDR) to the national ambition of 66.7%. The DDR for patients aged 65 years old and over at the end of October 2025 was 66.5%. The rate is an increase of 0.2 percentage points compared to 66.3% in September 2025. This is an overall increase from March 2020 due to sustained recovery efforts.
To support recovery of the dementia diagnosis rates and implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, we have developed a memory service dashboard for management information purposes. The aim is to support commissioners and providers with appropriate data and enable targeted support where needed.
To reduce variation in diagnosis rates, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ Dementia Intelligence Network has developed a tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates. The tool has been released and is available via the NHS Futures Collaboration platform.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many yellow card reports of (1) tinnitus (Medical Dictionary for Regulatory Activities (MedDRA) code 10043882), and (2) worsening of tinnitus (MedDRA code 10048029), the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency received in each year since 2014, and what medications those reported were linked to.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) is responsible for ensuring medicines, medical devices, and blood components for transfusion meet applicable standards of safety, quality, and efficacy. The MHRA rigorously assesses the available data, including from the Yellow Card scheme, and seeks advice from the Commission on Human Medicines, the MHRA’s independent advisory committee, where appropriate, to inform regulatory decisions, including amending the product information.
The MHRA has received a total of 11,348 United Kingdom based reports through the Yellow Card scheme associated with reaction term tinnitus, including worsening of tinnitus, from 1 January 2014 up to and including 27 November 2025. The reports received between 2014 and 2025 were for a wide range of medicinal products which include antidepressants, hormonal medicines, vaccines, antipsychotics, antibiotics, cardiovascular medicines, drugs used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, sedatives, drugs used to treat dementia and diabetes, drugs used to treat osteoporosis, Parkinson’s disease, and pain. The following table shows a yearly breakdown of reports associated with tinnitus, from 2014 to 2025, and in total:
Year | Number of reports |
2014 | 147 |
2015 | 164 |
2016 | 230 |
2017 | 206 |
2018 | 197 |
2019 | 205 |
2020 | 212 |
2021 | 7,208 |
2022 | 1,248 |
2023 | 578 |
2024 | 495 |
2025 | 458 |
Total | 11,348 |
It is important to note that anyone can report to the MHRA’s Yellow Card scheme and the recording of these reports in the Yellow Card database does not necessarily mean that the adverse reactions have been caused by the suspect drug. Many factors must be considered in assessing causal relationships, including temporal association, the possible contribution of concomitant medication, and the underlying disease. We encourage reporters to report suspected adverse reaction reports, and the reporter does not have to be sure of a causal association between the drug and the reactions, as a suspicion will suffice.
The number of reports received cannot be used as a basis for determining the incidence of a reaction, as neither the total number of reactions occurring, nor the number of patients using the drug, is known. All fatal reports, including those reporting completed suicide, are assessed by the MHRA, and cumulative information is reviewed at regular intervals.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many referrals to dementia specialists were made in England in each year since 2010 by local authority.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This data is not held centrally. While counts of patients who have received a dementia assessment and subsequently been referred to a memory clinic have been collected since the 2016/17 reporting year, the figures are not provided at an integrated care board level and are also not aggregated by local authority. This data captures the number of patients who have received such a referral, and does not capture the following:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/recorded-dementia-diagnoses
In addition, data from 2022 to 2025 can be found in the recorded dementia diagnoses publication: Primary care dementia data publication, at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/primary-care-dementia-data
The counts available in the March publication of each year will provide the number of referrals made within that reporting year.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many referrals to dementia specialists were made in England in each year since 2010 by Integrated Care Board.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This data is not held centrally. While counts of patients who have received a dementia assessment and subsequently been referred to a memory clinic have been collected since the 2016/17 reporting year, the figures are not provided at an integrated care board level and are also not aggregated by local authority. This data captures the number of patients who have received such a referral, and does not capture the following:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/recorded-dementia-diagnoses
In addition, data from 2022 to 2025 can be found in the recorded dementia diagnoses publication: Primary care dementia data publication, at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/primary-care-dementia-data
The counts available in the March publication of each year will provide the number of referrals made within that reporting year.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients on waiting lists for dementia diagnosis have informed their GP they are receiving private treatment since 2010 in England, broken down by (a) Integrated Care Board and (b) year.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This information is not held centrally.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients on waiting lists for dementia diagnosis have informed their GP they are receiving private treatment since 2010 in England, broken down by (a) local authority and (b) year.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This information is not held centrally.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many dementia specialists were recruited in England in each year since 2010 by local authority.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We do not hold this information centrally. Dementia care involves multiple specialties. We hold data by profession rather than by specific skills or areas of knowledge.
Asked by: Nick Timothy (Conservative - West Suffolk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many dementia specialists were recruited in England in each year since 2010 by Integrated Care Board.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We do not hold this information centrally. Dementia care involves multiple specialties. We hold data by profession rather than by specific skills or areas of knowledge.