Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
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 improve breast cancer outcomes amongst Black women.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing inequalities and improving breast cancer outcomes for ethnic minority women, including black women, is a priority for the Government. To support this work, NHS England has commissioned six new cancer clinical audits, which will provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatments and outcomes for patients, including metastatic breast cancer. The Royal College of Surgeons began work on this audit in October 2022, and the first outcomes are expected in September 2024.
NHS England is also leading a programme of work to tackle healthcare inequalities centred around five clear priorities, which are set out in operational planning guidance for the health system. The Core20PLUS5 approach for adults has been rolled out as an NHS England framework to focus action on reducing inequalities on issues within the National Health Services’ direct influence, which are major contributors to inequalities in life expectancy through major conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and others, or Long-Term Plan priorities where stark inequalities are evident, such as maternity or severe mental illness.
The key actions for systems as highlighted in NHS England’s planning guidance for 2024/25 is to continue to deliver against the five strategic priorities for tackling health inequalities. Additionally, by the end of June 2024, NHS England aims to publish joined-up action plans to address health inequalities, and implement the Core20PLUS5 approach.
Improving earlier diagnosis of cancers, including breast cancer, is also a priority for the Government. The NHS has an ambition to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, which will help tens of thousands of people live for longer. Additionally, the new cancer standards developed and supported by cancer doctors and implemented in October 2023, will ensure patients are diagnosed faster, and that treatment starts earlier. In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced that it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years, to support the delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer, which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity.
Whilst the Major Conditions Strategy does not seek to describe everything that is being done, or could be done, to meet the challenges of individual conditions in silo, it instead focuses on the changes likely to make the most difference across the six groups of major conditions, including cancer.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many births took place in the Maternity Unit at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston in each year since 2000.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department does not hold information on the number of births between 2000 and 2004 in the maternity unit at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston. The following table shows the number of births for each year since 2004 in the maternity unit at Pilgrim Hospital in Boston:
Year | Number of births |
2004 | 1,841 |
2005 | 1,918 |
2006 | 1,887 |
2007 | 1,987 |
2008 | 2,208 |
2009 | 2,227 |
2010 | 2,275 |
2011 | 2,184 |
2012 | 2,250 |
2013 | 2,065 |
2014 | 2,076 |
2015/16 | 2,002 |
2016/17 | 1,785 |
2017/18 | 1,941 |
2018/19 | 1,738 |
2019/20 | 1,767 |
2020/21 | 1,619 |
2021/22 | 1,803 |
2022/23 | 1,716 |
2023/24 | 1,657 |
Note: due to a change in reporting systems, the years up to 2015 were recorded as calendar years, with 2015 onward being recorded as financial years.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
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 improve retention rates of NHS maternity staff.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out how to improve culture and leadership, to ensure that up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the National Health Service over the next 15 years. This includes: implementing actions from the NHS People Plan that have been shown to be successful; implementing plans to improve flexible opportunities for prospective retirees, and delivering the actions needed to modernise the NHS pension scheme; and committing to ongoing national funding for continuing professional development for nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals, so NHS staff are supported to meet their full potential. These measures apply across staff groups, including maternity staff.
Asked by: Gen Kitchen (Labour - Wellingborough)
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 support the recruitment and retention of midwives in Wellingborough constituency.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We are investing an additional £186 million a year to improve maternity and neonatal care and grow the workforce. On top of this, the Government and NHS England are investing nearly £35 million over three years, from 2024/25 to 2026/27, to further improve maternity safety across England, with specialist training for staff, additional numbers of midwives, and support to ensure maternity services listen to, and act on, women’s experiences to improve care. As announced at the Spring Budget, we are further increasing the number of midwives by funding an additional 160 new posts over three years, to support the continued growth of the maternity and neonatal workforce.
On retention, the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets out how to improve culture and leadership to ensure that up to 130,000 fewer staff leave the National Health Service over the next 15 years. This includes: implementing actions from the NHS People Plan that have been shown to be successful; implementing plans to improve flexible opportunities for prospective retirees, and delivering the actions needed to modernise the NHS pension scheme; and committing to ongoing national funding for continuing professional development for nurses, midwives, and allied health professionals, so NHS staff are supported to meet their full potential. These measures apply across the country, including for midwives in the Wellingborough constituency.
Asked by: Bell Ribeiro-Addy (Labour - Streatham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to paragraph 4.2 of the report entitled A comparison of the care of Asian and White women who have experienced a stillbirth or neonatal death, published by the MBRRACE-UK Perinatal Confidential Enquiry on 14 December 2023, whether her Department has had discussions with NHS England on taking steps to improve how ethnicity data is recorded.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department has regular and ongoing discussions with NHS England, and other relevant bodies, on improving neonatal and maternity data quality. This includes discussions on how to improve the recording of ethnicity data. NHS Equity and Equality Guidance, produced as part of NHS England’s three-year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, includes ethnic coding data completeness to better understand local populations and their health outcomes. Ethnic coding data completeness has improved year on year, from 85% in 2019 to 93% in 2022.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of maternity staff leaving NHS employment on services.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department works with NHS England on a regular basis to review the numbers of staff working in National Health Service maternity services, and to identify any issues which could potentially impact services.
Growing, retaining, and supporting the maternity workforce to ensure that there are staff with the capacity and the right skills to deliver safe, personalised, and equitable care for women and babies is a key theme of NHS England’s Three Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services. NHS England is also delivering a nursing and midwifery retention programme, supporting organisations in assessing themselves against a bundle of interventions aligned to the NHS People Promise, and to develop high-quality local retention improvement plans.
Asked by: Tim Loughton (Conservative - East Worthing and Shoreham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding has been allocated to the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigation programme; and whether that funding is time limited.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department has allocated £16 million to the Maternity and Newborn Safety Investigations Programme for this financial year, which is the last year of this spending review period. Future budgets will be allocated in the usual way as part of the next Spending Review.
The lifespan of the programme is under review and will continue to be overseen by the Care Quality Commission, until directed otherwise by the Department. The Department, through the National Institute for Health and Care Research, is funding an evaluation to understand whether Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch investigations and Perinatal Mortality Review Tool reviews have met their anticipated requirements, resulted in system level quality improvements in maternity care, and improved outcomes for parents and families.
Asked by: Ellie Reeves (Labour - Lewisham West and Penge)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she has taken to ensure that effective support is provided to autistic women (a) during and (b) after childbirth.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Health and Care Act 2022 requires Care Quality Commission registered providers, which includes maternity services, to ensure their staff receive specific training on learning disability and autism, appropriate to their role. We are rolling out the Oliver McGowan Mandatory Training on Learning Disability and Autism to support this. This training will help to ensure that staff have the right skills and knowledge to provide safe and compassionate care, including how to provide reasonable adjustments for autistic people.
NHS England is also working to improve the use and recording of reasonable adjustments to make it easier for autistic people to use health services, by ensuring care is tailored appropriately. This includes the development of a Reasonable Adjustment Digital Flag, which will enable the recording of key information about a patient, including if a person is autistic, and their reasonable adjustment needs, to ensure support can be tailored appropriately.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made in implementing the National Maternity Review’s report Better Births, published on 22 February 2016.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Better Births report sets out a vision for maternity services across England to become safer and more personalised. NHS England subsequently published their Three-Year Delivery Plan for Maternity and Neonatal Services, which sets out how maternity and neonatal care will be made safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women, babies, and families. The plan encompasses recommendations from several reports, including the National Maternity Review’s Better Births report.
Many initiatives are being delivered through the plan to implement the vision from Better Births, including continuity of carer, rolling out an updated version of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle to reduce stillbirth, neonatal brain injury, neonatal death, and preterm birth, and Local Maternity and Neonatal Systems producing Equity and Equality Action Plans to tackle disparities in the outcomes and experiences of maternity care at a local level.
Asked by: Lord Alton of Liverpool (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the five recommendations made in the report by the First 1001 Days Movement, A Manifesto for Babies, published on 19 March; and whether they intend to respond to each recommendation.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There is strong evidence that the 1,001 days from pregnancy to the age of two years old set the foundations for our cognitive, emotional, and physical development. Investing in this critical period presents a real opportunity to improve outcomes and tackle health disparities by ensuring that thousands of babies and families have improved access to quality support and services. The Government is therefore already taking forward a range of actions in line with recommendations in the report by the First 1001 Days Movement to ensure that every baby gets the best start in life.
For example, in March 2021, the Government published The best start for life: a vision for the 1,001 critical days, a copy of which is attached. This vision sets out six action areas for improving support for families during the 1,001 critical days to ensure every baby in England is given the best possible start in life, regardless of background.
The Government is also investing approximately £300 million to improve support for families though the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. The programme is implementing many elements of the Best Start for Life Vision and is delivering a step change in outcomes for babies, children and their parents and carers in 75 local authorities in England, including those with high levels of deprivation. Many local authorities without funding have also chosen to implement elements of the vision.
The programme funding package includes £10 million to enable five local authorities and their partners to pilot innovative early years workforce models, with the aim of improving the access, experience and outcomes of babies, children, and families, and supporting the capacity and job satisfaction of the workforces involved.
To support new parents, Statutory Maternity Pay is paid by employers to qualifying employed women for a maximum of 39 weeks, the first six weeks of which are paid at 90% of the women’s salary followed by 33 weeks at the lower of either the standard rate or 90% of the woman’s average weekly earnings. For those who cannot get Statutory Maternity Pay, Maternity Allowance may be available. This is a benefit paid by the Department for Work and Pensions to eligible women and is intended for those who cannot get Statutory Maternity Pay. The standard rate of maternity pay is reviewed annually.
Paternity Leave arrangements enable employed fathers and partners, including same sex partners, who meet the qualifying conditions to take up to two weeks of paid leave within the first eight weeks following the birth of their child or placement for adoption. The Government has recently announced changes to make Paternity Leave and Pay more flexible for working families from April 2024. This includes allowing fathers and partners to take their leave and pay at any point in the first year after the birth or adoption of their child.
A Shared Parental Leave and Pay scheme is also available, giving working families much more choice and flexibility about who cares for their child in the first year, and when.