Asked by: Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will ensure that those seeking support for managing pain are offered a choice of options through the NHS including mindfulness-based therapies, to reduce the proportion of treatments that rely on medication and the risk of overprescribing.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guideline, Chronic pain (primary and secondary) in over 16s: assessment of all chronic pain and management of chronic primary pain, published in April 2021, recommends a range of pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatment options for pain management. NICE found there was insufficient evidence on mindfulness to recommend it as an option for pain management within this guideline. However, it made recommendations for research on mindfulness to inform future guidance. A copy of NICE’s guideline is attached.
The National Health Service is also taking a holistic approach to supporting people’s health and wellbeing by expanding its social prescribing services. This enables general practitioners to refer people to community groups and agencies for practical, emotional and social support, for example when managing pain.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of offering mindfulness to NHS staff.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
From the onset of the pandemic, staff in the National Health Service have been able to access for free a range of mental health and wellbeing apps, which have included mindfulness and meditation.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including mindfulness in the national curriculum for all school ages in England.
Answered by Vicky Ford
The department wants to support all young people to be happy, healthy, and safe. We want to equip them for adult life and to make a positive contribution to society.
Health education is now compulsory for pupils in all state funded schools. Health education gives schools the opportunity to drive up the consistency and quality of pupils’ mental wellbeing and physical health knowledge by delivering clear content through evidence based teaching.
The department is committed to supporting all schools to deliver Relationships and Sexual Health Education, which includes a range of specific teaching requirements on mental health and wellbeing. A mental wellbeing teacher training module and implementation guidance have been published for the new curriculum to help subject leads and teachers understand what they should teach, as well as improving their confidence in delivering mental wellbeing as part of the new curriculum.
It is up to schools to decide how to teach this subject and what additional pastoral provision to put in place. To support schools to make evidence-based decisions about how to best support their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing, the department is funding a large scale programme of randomised control trials of mental health interventions in schools. The aim of this programme is to provide robust evidence on what works to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing and whether programmes can be delivered effectively in schools.
The programme is testing the effectiveness of five different approaches to supporting pupil mental health and wellbeing in primary and secondary schools across England. It includes a programme of brief mindfulness exercises to be run by teachers in the classroom, which provides teachers with a short training session and materials to run brief mindfulness exercises with their classes.
The department remains committed to long term improvements to support children and young people’s mental health, set out in the government’s response to its green paper and NHS Long Term Plan. This includes the roll out of mental health support teams and the provision of training for senior mental health leads in schools and colleges.
Asked by: Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of mindfulness teaching in (1) schools, (2) colleges, and (3) universities.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
The Department for Education remains committed to long term improvements to support children and young people’s mental health, set out in the government’s response to its Green Paper and NHS Long Term Plan. This includes the roll-out of mental health support teams and the provision of training for Senior Leads for Mental Health in schools and colleges.
As part of this, we are producing evidence about what works to support mental health and wellbeing in schools, so that they can make evidence-based decisions about how to best support their pupils’ mental health and wellbeing. The department is funding a large-scale programme of randomised control trials of mental health interventions in schools. The aim of this programme is to provide robust evidence on what works to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing and whether programmes can be delivered effectively in a school setting.
The programme is testing the effectiveness of 5 different approaches to supporting pupil mental health and wellbeing in primary and secondary schools across England. It includes a programme of brief mindfulness-based exercises to be run by teachers in the classroom, which provides teachers with a short training session and materials to run brief mindfulness-based exercises with their classes.
The government has not made an assessment of the effectiveness of mindfulness in colleges and universities. It is for higher education providers as autonomous bodies to identify and address the needs of their student body and decide what mental health and wellbeing support to put in place.
Asked by: Jamie Stone (Liberal Democrat - Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to affordable (a) meditation, (b) mindfulness classes, (c) yoga, (d) pilates and (e) hitt workouts to improve people's mental health.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
The Government is absolutely committed to supporting everyone’s mental health and wellbeing throughout the winter period and beyond, and to ensuring that the right support is in place. The National Health Service has launched a major campaign as part of its ‘Help Us Help You’ campaign to encourage people who may be struggling with common mental health illnesses to come forward for help.
The NHS is also taking a holistic approach to supporting people’s health and wellbeing by expanding its social prescribing services. Social prescribing enables general practitioners to refer people to link workers who can work with them to access community groups and agencies for practical, emotional and social support. For example, the recently announced ukactive scheme will make free gym and leisure sessions available to the public via social prescribing services. National rollout will start from 1 April 2021.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
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 availability of evidence-based talking therapies other than cognitive behavioural therapy in Improving Access to Psychological Therapies services throughout England; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
In addition to cognitive behavioural therapy, the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme provides the following National Institute for Health and Care Excellence approved therapies: guided and non-guided self-help through a book or a computer, counselling for depression, psychoeducational peer support, behavioural activation (high and low intensity), eye movement desensitisation reprocessing, interpersonal psychotherapy, mindfulness, collaborative care, couples therapy for depression, brief psychodynamic psychotherapy, structured physical activity, applied relaxation and ante/post-natal counselling.
NHS Digital publishes annual reports on the IAPT programme and this includes a therapy-based outcome analysis, detailing all the therapies available through IAPT services. The latest report can be found at the following link:
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he is taking to increase the use of in-cell technology in prisons for (a) education, (b) rehabilitation, (c) communication and (d) other purposes.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The department’s technology priority since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak has been focused on enabling communication between prisoners and their families and friends.
Since the beginning of March, this has resulted in the deployment of over 1000 secure mobile phones to complement existing in-cell telephones and wing phones.
We have deployed nearly 250 tablets for compassionate calls across all public prisons in England and Wales and most significantly we have deployed video calls across 105 sites to enable an interim alternative whilst face-to-face meetings were suspended. There are still 7 sites which are yet to have fully operational video visits, these are being worked on by our teams as a priority. Over 27,000 video calls have been made so far.
As announced in June, £20m was secured to increase technology infrastructure across the estate. This work is enabling additional video-conferencing facilities and the extension of in-cell technology across sites with existing network infrastructure.
This complements existing work to install technology across the entire youth estate, which will support education and rehabilitation by providing secure access to appropriate content on laptops via our Content Hub. The Content Hub provides access to education materials such as maths exercises, books supporting people learning to read, and specific vocational learning materials (including customer service skills, food safety awareness, and Khan Academy materials to support people learning to be electricians).
During the COVID-19 crisis, additional education services have been added to the Content Hub, including mindfulness tools, in-cell exercises, and audio books to support the residents during longer periods in cells. National Prison Radio shows have also been used to keep residents calm and to reduce frustration.
The use of secure technology to enable the safe delivery of education in-cell is a key part of our strategy to improve rehabilitation, get more prisoners ready for jobs on release and reduce reoffending. We continue to consider the recommendations of the Farmer Review when prioritising future deployment of technology.
Asked by: Grahame Morris (Labour - Easington)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps he has taken to increase the use of in-cell technology in prisons for education since the start of the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The department’s technology priority since the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak has been focused on enabling communication between prisoners and their families and friends.
Since the beginning of March, this has resulted in the deployment of over 1000 secure mobile phones to complement existing in-cell telephones and wing phones.
We have deployed nearly 250 tablets for compassionate calls across all public prisons in England and Wales and most significantly we have deployed video calls across 105 sites to enable an interim alternative whilst face-to-face meetings were suspended. There are still 7 sites which are yet to have fully operational video visits, these are being worked on by our teams as a priority. Over 27,000 video calls have been made so far.
As announced in June, £20m was secured to increase technology infrastructure across the estate. This work is enabling additional video-conferencing facilities and the extension of in-cell technology across sites with existing network infrastructure.
This complements existing work to install technology across the entire youth estate, which will support education and rehabilitation by providing secure access to appropriate content on laptops via our Content Hub. The Content Hub provides access to education materials such as maths exercises, books supporting people learning to read, and specific vocational learning materials (including customer service skills, food safety awareness, and Khan Academy materials to support people learning to be electricians).
During the COVID-19 crisis, additional education services have been added to the Content Hub, including mindfulness tools, in-cell exercises, and audio books to support the residents during longer periods in cells. National Prison Radio shows have also been used to keep residents calm and to reduce frustration.
The use of secure technology to enable the safe delivery of education in-cell is a key part of our strategy to improve rehabilitation, get more prisoners ready for jobs on release and reduce reoffending. We continue to consider the recommendations of the Farmer Review when prioritising future deployment of technology.
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, pursuant to the Answer of 21 October 2019 to Question 904, what the campaigns and initiatives referred to in the Answer were; and how many staff took part in each of them.
Answered by Simon Hart - Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasury (Chief Whip)
As referenced in the Answer of 21 October 2019 to Question 904, Cabinet Office has run a number of campaigns and initiatives in the past year to improve the personal wellbeing of staff relating to physical, mental and social wellbeing. The department receives consistently strong engagement rates in activities relating to these campaign events. Whilst we cannot give exact numbers, we estimate that around 2000 members of staff taking part in events and initiatives in the first ten months of 2019, either physically or remotely through the use of video technology.
A breakdown of events can be seen below:
Month | Type of initiative | Staff Engagement |
January | Wellbeing Month - we organised 29 events and training sessions throughout the month, including resilience workshops, park runs, mindfulness sessions and a visit by ‘wellbeing dogs’ | Over 400 people attended workshops, 30 colleagues joined sessions remotely (via google hangout), and hundreds of colleagues visited the wellbeing dogs. |
February | Time to Talk Day events | Circa 50 attended events |
May | Mental Health Awareness Week – 5 talks organised and ‘This is me’ campaign where Cabinet Office staff shared their own personal stories with mental health | Raised £219 by selling green ribbons to staff Circa 500 members of staff took part in this campaign either through buying a ribbon or attending one of the talks |
June | Civil Service Active Wellbeing Week, led by Civil Service Sports Council. To support the week, colleagues across Cabinet Office volunteered their own time to run a series of events, such as bike rides, pilates sessions and wellbeing walks. | As these were organised by volunteers, we do not have an estimated number of staff who attended these events, however they were very popular amongst colleagues. |
September | National Suicide Prevention Day – guest speaker | Circa 50 members of staff attended the talk on the day, and a further 150 watched the talk remotely through the use of video technology. |
September | Know Your Numbers Week. A national campaign led by Blood Pressure UK to encourage staff to know their vital health statistics, such as blood pressure, heart rate, hydration and body mass index. As part of this event, we arranged for health check kiosks to be made available for staff in our London and Newcastle offices | A total of 683 people using these kiosks. In addition, 30 people took part in the smoothie bike challenge which formed part of the event |
October | Cabinet Office encouraged staff to stop smoking for 28 days as part of the Stoptober campaign. We promoted this campaign via the intranet and set up stalls manned by specialist stop smoking advisors | Circa 30 people visited stalls |
October | World Mental Health Day. This included a tea & talk session, a panel discussion and a mental wellbeing workshop. | Around 300 people took part in these events, with a further 200 people buying green ribbons to support the day |
Asked by: Chris Ruane (Labour - Vale of Clwyd)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister for the Cabinet Office, whether his Department is taking steps to incorporate mindfulness and wellbeing into support for veterans provided by the Office for Veterans' Affairs.
Answered by Oliver Dowden - Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster
The Government already provides significant support to veterans through mental health and wellbeing services, including through an additional £10m to support Veterans’ Mental Health and Wellbeing needs announced in autumn 2018. The NHS in England has developed two bespoke services, the Veterans’ Mental Health Transition, Intervention and Liaison Service and the Veterans’ Mental Health Complex Treatment Services.
The Office for Veterans' Affairs will be working to join up such services across government and collaborating closely with service charities to ensure that veterans can access the mental health and well-being support they need.
Health and wellbeing is also one of the key areas set out in the Strategy for our Veterans, on which we worked closely with the Devolved Administrations. One of the Office’s first tasks will be to produce a detailed work programme informed by the responses to the consultation on this Strategy.