Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had discussions with (a) NICE and (b) Bristol Myers Squibb on restarting the NICE appraisals process for luspatercept (Reblozyl).
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Departmental officials regularly discuss a range of issues with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), including on access to medicines such as luspatercept (Reblozyl). The Department has had no discussions with Bristol Myers Squibb on this specific topic.
Luspatercept has a licence in the United Kingdom for the treatment of adult patients with transfusion-dependent anaemia due to very low, and low and intermediate-risk myelodysplastic syndrome with ring sideroblasts, who had an unsatisfactory response to, or are ineligible for, erythropoietin-based therapy. The NICE had to terminate its appraisal of luspatercept for treating anaemia caused by myelodysplastic syndromes because the manufacturer did not provide an evidence submission. The NICE will review this decision if the company decides to make a submission.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he made an assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential merits of increasing funding for (a) social care and (b) the Better Care Fund in the Spring Budget 2024.
Answered by Laura Trott - Chief Secretary to the Treasury
The Chancellor and Chief Secretary hold regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues on spending priorities for fiscal events.
The government has now made available up to £8.6bn in additional funding over this financial year and next to support adult social care and discharge. This includes £500m announced in January which has specifically been made available to support local authorities with the cost of social care in 2024-25 in response to representations from local government stakeholders. This funding will enable local authorities to buy more care packages, help people leave hospital on time, improve workforce recruitment and retention, and reduce waiting times for care.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to ensure health intervention programmes have a focus on reducing adult obesity.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are delivering an ambitious programme of work to create a healthier environment, to help people achieve and maintain a healthy weight. Regulations on out of home calorie labelling for food sold in large businesses, including restaurants, cafes, and takeaways, came into force in April 2022. Restrictions on the placement of products high in fat, sugar, or salt in key selling locations came into force on 1 October 2022. We will be implementing restrictions on the sale of less healthy products by volume price, for instance three for two offers, and will introduce restrictions on the advertising of less healthy products before 9:00pm on television. We will also be implementing restrictions on paid for online advertising for less healthy products, from 1 October 2025.
We are working with the food industry to ensure it is easier for the public to make healthier choices, and make further progress on reformulation. In addition, the Food Data Transparency Partnership will help enable and encourage food companies to voluntarily demonstrate progress on the healthiness of their sales.
We are also supporting more than three million children through the Healthy Foods Schemes, and helping schools boost physical activity to help children maintain a healthy weight and good overall health through the Primary School PE and Sport Premium and the School Games Organiser Network. In addition, local authorities and the National Health Service provide weight management services and the NHS Health Check Programme, to support their communities in achieving and maintaining a healthier weight.
Asked by: Lisa Cameron (Conservative - East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow)
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 increase the number and proportion of (a) counsellors and (b) adult psychotherapists in the mental health workforce.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
According to the NHS Electronic Staff Record, there was a 51% growth in the psychological professional workforce from April 2019 to March 2023. This compares to a 16% growth in the National Health Service’s workforce as a whole, over the same period. Counsellors and adult Psychotherapists are two specific occupations within the overall psychological professional workforce of approximately 27,800 full time equivalent staff.
In order to grow the workforce with specific qualifications in counselling and adult psychotherapy, NHS England has commissioned a pilot training programme for Psychotherapeutic Counsellors. This provides a three-year salaried and funded postgraduate education pathway for trainee Psychotherapeutic Counsellors to work in the NHS Talking Therapies services for anxiety and depression, to deliver specified NHS Talking Therapies services for adults with depression. This NHS training route adds to other existing routes for Counsellors to enter and work in the NHS Talking Therapies workforce.
Asked by: Janet Daby (Labour - Lewisham East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, with reference to the HM Chief Inspector of Prisons publication entitled Report on an unannounced inspection of HMYOI Wetherby by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons (20 November – 7 December 2023), published on 5 March 2024, what assessment he has made of the quality of risk assessments completed by resettlement practitioners.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Following the previous inspection of HMYOI Wetherby, additional emphasis was placed on resettlement work. This has resulted in improved outcomes for children and young people in our care. HM Inspectorate’s latest report notes that children and 18-year-olds received good support from resettlement practitioners (RPs) and the social workers who worked with them, and Home Detention Curfew (HDC), transitions, parole and early release processes were managed well.
The Head of Resettlement at HMYOI Wetherby will lead improvement in the quality and consistency of risk-assessment work by RPs, by undertaking the following actions:
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will ask the Care Quality Commission to undertake an assessment of the quality of the commissioning of children's palliative care services by integrated care boards.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) recently completed the integrated care system (ICS) assessment pilots, which included an assessment of how health and social care provision is planned, coordinated, and delivered in a cohesive way.
For the pilots, the CQC assessed data and local intelligence relating to the safety and effectiveness of different types of services across primary care, secondary care, and adult social care. This included hospices and other palliative and end of life care services. ICS assessments do not inspect individual services or focus on specific sectors. The CQC seeks information from local and regional CQC operations teams, NHS England, and professional regulators such as the General Medical Council and the Nursing and Midwifery Council, to identify areas of good practice and high-performing services, as well as risks and concerns relating to specific providers or sectors. The CQC looks at aggregate ratings of different types of services within a geographical area to identify areas of risk that might require a particular focus during assessments.
The CQC’s ICS assessment methodology incorporates interviews and focus groups with commissioners, providers, patient representative groups, and voluntary and community sector organisations to understand how people experience care. Work continues to define the final methodology and approach, in line with the existing Departmental priorities.
The Department is in ongoing discussions with NHS England about oversight and accountability of National Health Service palliative and end of life care commissioning, and I have met with NHS England officials personally on this matter on a number of occasions. We remain committed to improving patient access to, and quality of, palliative and end of life care, and are working with NHS England to achieve this.
NHS England has developed a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of their local population, enabling integrated care boards (ICBs) to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities, and ensure that funding is distributed fairly, based on prevalence.
Additionally, as of April 2024, NHS England will include palliative and end of life care in the list of topics for regular performance discussions between national and regional leads. These meetings will provide an additional mechanism for supporting ICBs to continue improving palliative and end of life care for their local population.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether he has had discussions with the Northern Ireland Minister for Justice on tackling female (a) trafficking, (b) exploitation and (c) sexual exploitation in Northern Ireland.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
Criminal justice is devolved in Northern Ireland, with responsibility for the policy and legislative response to modern slavery resting with the Northern Ireland Executive. However, we recognise that trafficking can involve the movement of vulnerable individuals across borders, and we work closely with our partners in the Northern Ireland Executive to ensure that our response to modern slavery across the UK is joined-up and the legislation is complementary.
This includes, at official level, regular engagement with representatives from the Devolved Administrations, through quarterly meetings and the Modern Slavery Engagement Forums. These Forums focus on key policy areas, including enforcement, prevention, adult victim support, and child and victim support policy. Officials also engage in quarterly meetings with representatives on commercial sexual exploitation.
The Home Office also engages with First Responder Organisations, across the whole of the United Kingdom. In Northern Ireland this includes the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), Health and Social Care trusts and Belfast and Lisburn Women’s Aid. First Responders are trained by their respective organisations to identify indicators of modern slavery and refer potential victims into the National Referral Mechanism (NRM). In 2023, there were 462 NRM referrals sent to the PSNI for investigation, accounting for 3% of all referrals received, as published in the National Referral Mechanism statistics on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Damian Green (Conservative - Ashford)
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 (a) recruit and (b) retain social care workers.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to supporting the recruitment and retention of the adult social care workforce, by ensuring that there are opportunities to develop and progress, and that people feel recognised. In January 2024 we launched the care workforce pathway, which will provide for the first time ever, a national career structure for the workforce. This is alongside our new nationally accredited care qualification, subsidised training places for care staff, and social work and social care nursing apprenticeships. The Government also continues to deliver the Made with Care national recruitment campaign, which promotes social care as a career.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
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 FTE (a) fully qualified grade 1 adult rheumatology consultants and (b) fully qualified grade 1 paediatric rheumatology consultant vacancies and shortages in England.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No specific estimate has been made of adult or paediatric consultant rheumatologist vacancies.
Asked by: Sarah Dyke (Liberal Democrat - Somerton and Frome)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring inspections by the Care Quality Commission to take into account the experience of LGBTQ+ residents in care homes.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Any discrimination in adult social care on the basis of one’s sexual or gender identity, or indeed on the basis of any protected characteristic, is unacceptable. The Equality Act 2010 legally protects people from discrimination in the workplace, and in wider society.
The Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspects and assesses care homes and other social care providers for compliance against the fundamental standards embedded in regulation. This includes the requirement, as clearly described in the CQC’s guidance, for providers to do everything reasonably practicable to make sure that people who use the service receive person-centred care, that meets their needs and reflects their personal preferences. As part of this, during an inspection, the CQC will take account of how the service considers a person’s protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010.
The CQC has also published its Equality Objectives, which outline how the CQC is taking a preventative approach to LGBTQ+ people experiencing prejudice or abuse, as well as improving the data it collects around equality risks. Finally, the new duty on the CQC to assess local authorities’ delivery of their adult social care duties went live from April this year. CQC assessment of local authorities will increase transparency, and enable people to hold their local authority to account.