Asked by: Rachel Gilmour (Liberal Democrat - Tiverton and Minehead)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to make the NHS chickenpox vaccination available to all children.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is considering the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s recommendation, published in November 2023, to introduce a varicella, also known as chickenpox, programme into the immunisation schedule for children.
It is important that any proposed change to the childhood immunisation schedule is comprehensively assessed to maintain the high standards of the United Kingdom’s world-leading vaccination programmes and ensure the best value for money for taxpayers.
The Government will make a final decision about whether to introduce a chickenpox programme, including the eligibility and timing of any potential programme, when this work has concluded.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data he holds on the number of people with late stage cancer diagnoses broken down by religious group.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England, as the national cancer registry, collects and analyses diagnosis and treatment data on cancer patients in England. The religion of patients is not collected or stored by the NDRS. Further information on the NDRS is available at the following link:
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
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 monitor the (a) physical and (b) mental health outcomes of women who act as surrogates.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ensuring that women are healthy during their pregnancy is important for ensuring good outcomes for women and babies. This includes surrogates, also known as gestational carriers. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority’s Scientific and Clinical Advances Advisory Committee reviews the published evidence of health outcomes for those having fertility treatment, including surrogates. The last 10 years of evidence were recently reviewed, and further information on the findings of this review can be found at the following link:
General practitioners are contractually required to offer a maternal consultation between six and eight weeks postnatally which all women, including surrogates, are entitled to. This consultation should be holistic and balance how physical and mental issues can impact each other. The consultation’s focus includes a review of the mother’s mental health and general wellbeing, and the return to physical health following childbirth and pregnancy.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
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 ensure the National Cancer Plan prioritises improving patient (a) experience and (b) quality of life.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care, as well as prevention, and research and innovation. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care to better the experience and outcomes for people with cancer.
The 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: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's planned timetable is for distributing interim payments for people affected by sodium valproate and pelvic mesh.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is carefully considering the work done by the Patient Safety Commissioner and her report, which set out options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh. This is a complex issue involving input from different Government departments. The Government will provide a further update to the Patient Safety Commissioner’s report.
Asked by: Sarah Gibson (Liberal Democrat - Chippenham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of NHS services for people with myalgic encephalomyelitis.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Earlier this year, NHS England completed a long COVID and myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), stocktake to provide a national overview of service delivery in commissioning and contracting, assessing access, activity, and outcomes. The findings confirmed widely recognised challenges, as well as significant variation in care delivery across England, and a lack of comprehensive activity data.
The Department is working with NHS England to develop an e-learning programme on ME/CFS for healthcare professionals, including general practitioners in Wiltshire, with the aim of supporting staff to be able to provide better care and improve patient outcomes. Sessions one and two of the e-learning programme are now available at the following link:
https://learninghub.nhs.uk/catalogue/mecfselearning?nodeId=7288
The third session is currently being finalised and will be launched later in 2025.
The Medical Schools Council will promote the NHS England e-learning programme on ME/CFS to all United Kingdom medical schools, and will encourage those medical schools to provide undergraduates with direct patient experience of ME/CFS. The General Medical Council (GMC) is the regulator of medical schools, and it is important that education is reenforced at different stages of medical training. Royal colleges play an important role in this. The GMC has included ME/CFS in the content map for the new national exam, so all medical schools will need to teach it as a subject.
We are developing a final delivery plan for ME/CFS, which we aim to publish in due course. The plan will focus on boosting research, improving attitudes and education, and bettering the lives of people with this debilitating disease in Wiltshire and throughout England.
Asked by: Andrew Snowden (Conservative - Fylde)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on disparities in diabetes outcomes in different regions of (a) England and (b) Wales.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England, through the National Diabetes Audit (NDA), collects and publishes comprehensive data on diabetes care and outcomes across England. The NDA is a national clinical audit that measures the effectiveness of diabetes healthcare against National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) clinical guidelines and quality standards. It is a key resource for identifying and addressing regional disparities in diabetes services.
The most recent NDA annual report, for 2023/24, was published 12 December 2024 and is available at the following link:
Data can be viewed at national, regional, integrated care board, primary care network and practice level. An example of data that can be viewed at regional level is the proportion of people receiving all eight NICE-recommended care processes. In 2023/24, 47.2% of people with type 1 diabetes in England received all eight processes. The same year, 62.4% of people with type 2 diabetes in England received all eight care processes. Regional performance varies for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. For instance, the highest achieving regional area saw completion of type 2 eight care processes at 72.2% and the lowest 58.5%. A further example is diabetes prevalence and variation between the least and most deprived quintiles. The audit reports a general practitioner-recorded prevalence of type 2 diabetes of approximately 3.5 million adults in England, with data showing that 23.6% of this cohort are in the most deprived quintile, compared to 15% in the least deprived quintile.
The NDA collects and publishes some data from Wales, which is available at the following link:
Asked by: Liz Jarvis (Liberal Democrat - Eastleigh)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will conduct a review of the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises that concerns have been raised regarding the Vaccine Damage Payment Scheme (VDPS). Ministers are currently considering a number of options for reforming the scheme. In parallel, the Department has been working with the NHS Business Services Authority, the administrators of the scheme, to take steps to improve the VDPS by modernising operations, and processing claims at a faster rate.
Asked by: Charlotte Nichols (Labour - Warrington North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy that publicly-funded medical trials (a) must be balanced by sex and (b) results must be sex-disaggregated.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Medical trials, wherever possible, should always be balanced by sex, however, certain clinical trials are designed to investigate conditions that are only specific to one sex, so enforcing a balance would not make sense on those occasions.
The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). As outlined in the Research Inclusion Strategy 2022-2027, the NIHR is committed to exploring an approach which enables and encourages the research community to integrate sex and gender into their research design, including in the disaggregation of research findings. The Research Inclusion Strategy 2022-2027 is available at the following link:
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/about-us/who-we-are/research-inclusion/strategy-2022-27
On 10 March, the NIHR launched its sex and gender policy, which is expected to come into force later in 2025, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/integrating-sex-and-gender-health-and-care-research
Implementing such a policy will ensure that research accounts for sex and gender across every stage of the research cycle, thus facilitating both funding into topics that impact males and females, and a greater understanding of how they might be impacted differently by the same health condition.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham Edgbaston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on late stage cancer diagnoses, by ethnic group.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service in NHS England, as the national cancer registry, collects and analyses diagnosis and treatment data on cancer patients in England. Further information on the National Disease Registration Service is available at the following link:
The following estimates are taken from the data used in Accredited Official Statistics on Cancer Registration for 2022, the most recent diagnosis year available, with further information available at the following link:
The estimates apply the 2021 census ethnic groups for England and Wales, namely:
Further information on the ethnic groups used is available at the following link:
Where an ethnicity is not stated on the data sources that are used to compile the cancer registration statistics, these are given the label “Unknown (not stated)”.
The proportions given are on a complete case basis, which compares known stage at diagnosis, and stageable diagnoses for which insufficient data has been reported to the National Disease Registration Service are not included. The definition of early and late stage diagnoses are those used in the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions for cancer, specifically that diagnoses at stages 1 and 2 are considered to be early, and diagnoses at stages 3 and 4 are considered to be late. Further information on the NHS Long Term Plan ambitions for cancer is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/cancer/strategy/
The following table shows the number and proportion of cancers diagnosed early and late for all stageable diagnoses combined, by ethnic group, in 2022, in England:
Ethnic group | Number of early stage diagnoses | Proportion of early stage diagnoses | Number of early stage diagnoses | Proportion of late stage diagnoses |
Asian or Asian British | 4,126 | 57% | 3,122 | 43% |
Black, Black British, Caribbean, or African | 3,499 | 57% | 2,612 | 43% |
Mixed or multiple ethnic groups | 804 | 58% | 571 | 42% |
White | 112,391 | 55% | 93,085 | 45% |
Other ethnic group | 2,035 | 55% | 1,654 | 45% |
Unknown (not stated) | 11,697 | 58% | 8,345 | 42% |
All ethnicities combined | 134,552 | 55% | 109,389 | 45% |
Not every cancer is stageable, and some types of cancer do not have a staging system, so the tabulations above are for a subset of the reported total number of diagnoses of cancer.