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 whether NHS England, integrated care boards, and NHS Trusts have ensured that all maternity and neonatal staff have had the training, supervision, and support as required.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Regulated healthcare professionals need to meet the education and training standards set by their profession’s regulator. It is the responsibility of individual employers to ensure that their staff are trained and competent to carry out the role for which they are employed, and for making decisions about the ongoing professional training and development requirements of their staff. This includes responsibility for investing in the future of their staff, through providing continuing professional development funding.
Mandatory training for maternity staff is outlined in Core competency framework Version 2: Minimum standards and stretch targets, which provides both the minimum standards and stretch targets. Compliance with the core competency framework is overseen by integrated care boards and is incentivised through the Maternity Incentive Scheme which is administered by NHS Resolution. A copy of the framework is attached.
Support for staff working in maternity and neonatal services is provided by Professional Midwifery Advocates and Professional Nurse Advocates. This is a non-statutory model of clinical supervision. There are 1400 Professional Midwifery Advocates and approximately 300 Professional Nurse Advocates working in trusts in England.
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 steps they are taking to prevent children from developing diabetes at an early age.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is delivering an ambitious programme of work to help children and families maintain a healthier weight, which can prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes.
The Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) is contributing to reductions in levels of childhood obesity by encouraging soft drinks producers to remove added sugar from products. Levels of sugar in SDIL products have reduced by 46%, removing over 46,000 tonnes of sugar.
The Department supports three million children through the Healthy Food Schemes, which encourage and contribute to a healthy and balanced diet.
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 when they expect to publish a health prevention strategy.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Major Conditions Strategy outlines our approach in tackling six groups of major health conditions, by creating a health and care system that is faster, simpler, and fairer, focusing on prevention, proactive care and more person centred care. Since announcing the Major Conditions Strategy in January 2023, we have been working with a range of stakeholders in the health and care system, including those with lived experience, to identify what would make the most difference in tackling the six major conditions groups that account for around 60% of ill-health and early death in England.
We aim to publish the final strategy in summer of this year.
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 whether they intend to have any discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence about employing additional flexibility for rare condition medicines to take into consideration the implications of having a small population and potentially more expensive medicines.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department regularly meets with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to discuss a range of issues including access to and availability of medicines. NICE’s methods and processes for health technology evaluation have been proven to be suitable for medicines for rare diseases where companies price their products responsibly, and NICE introduced a number of changes to its methods and processes in 2022 that ensure that its processes are appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies.
NICE also operates a highly specialised technologies programme for the evaluation of a small number of medicines for the treatment of very rare diseases. As of 31 March 2024, NICE has recommended 88% of medicines licensed for the treatment of rare diseases for some or all of the eligible patient population, which is comparable to NICE’s approval rate for all medicines.
The Innovative Medicines Fund, building on the success of the Cancer Drugs Fund, provides a mechanism for consistent and transparent managed access process for companies offering promising non-cancer medicines at a responsible price. The Fund has already provided early access for National Health Service patients to several innovative new treatments, including for patients with rare diseases such as graft-versus-host disease and Wolman disease.
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 whether they plan to hold discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence about its appraisal system to ensure it is sufficiently flexible to respond to treatments and medicines for rare diseases.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department regularly meets with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to discuss a range of issues including access to and availability of medicines. NICE’s methods and processes for health technology evaluation have been proven to be suitable for medicines for rare diseases where companies price their products responsibly, and NICE introduced a number of changes to its methods and processes in 2022 that ensure that its processes are appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies.
NICE also operates a highly specialised technologies programme for the evaluation of a small number of medicines for the treatment of very rare diseases. As of 31 March 2024, NICE has recommended 88% of medicines licensed for the treatment of rare diseases for some or all of the eligible patient population, which is comparable to NICE’s approval rate for all medicines.
The Innovative Medicines Fund, building on the success of the Cancer Drugs Fund, provides a mechanism for consistent and transparent managed access process for companies offering promising non-cancer medicines at a responsible price. The Fund has already provided early access for National Health Service patients to several innovative new treatments, including for patients with rare diseases such as graft-versus-host disease and Wolman disease.
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 whether there are any further meetings planned for the Maternity Disparities Taskforce.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Maternity Disparities Taskforce has met six times. The taskforce will meet again in due course, to further explore and consider evidence-based interventions to tackle disparities in maternity outcomes and experience.
The taskforce is currently focused on developing a targeted pre-pregnancy toolkit, aimed at women from ethnic minorities and deprived areas, which will encourage healthy behaviours and planning for pregnancy by supporting women to make informed choices about their health and wellbeing.
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 how many meetings of the Maternity Disparities Taskforce have taken place since its establishment.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Maternity Disparities Taskforce has met six times. The taskforce will meet again in due course, to further explore and consider evidence-based interventions to tackle disparities in maternity outcomes and experience.
The taskforce is currently focused on developing a targeted pre-pregnancy toolkit, aimed at women from ethnic minorities and deprived areas, which will encourage healthy behaviours and planning for pregnancy by supporting women to make informed choices about their health and wellbeing.
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 whether there have been any outcomes from the work of the Maternity Disparities Taskforce.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Maternity Disparities Taskforce has met six times. The taskforce will meet again in due course, to further explore and consider evidence-based interventions to tackle disparities in maternity outcomes and experience.
The taskforce is currently focused on developing a targeted pre-pregnancy toolkit, aimed at women from ethnic minorities and deprived areas, which will encourage healthy behaviours and planning for pregnancy by supporting women to make informed choices about their health and wellbeing.
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 three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, published on 30 March 2023.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England is making good progress in delivering its Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, a copy of which is attached. The plan is backed by £186 million of funding per year from April 2024, which sets out how maternity and neonatal care will be made safer, more personalised, and more equitable for women, babies, and families.
For example, many local maternity and neonatal systems have published Equity and Equality Action Plans to tackle disparities in outcomes and experiences of maternity care at a local level. NHS England has published new guidance for general practitioners on the 6-8 week postnatal check, all parts of England have begun rollout of perinatal pelvic health services and 39 maternal mental health services have been established.
All trusts are implementing the third version of the Saving Babies Lives Care Bundle which provides maternity units with detailed guidance to reduce stillbirths and neonatal deaths.
NHS England’s Digital Maternity Fund has awarded 128 funding bids to support the digitisation of maternity services across England and NHS England have established a new data taskforce to better detect and act sooner on safety issues.
Finally, to increase neonatal cot capacity, £45 million of capital was allocated across several providers to deliver an overall increase of more than 50 cots.
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 whether all integrated care systems have published equity and equality plans, and whether they have taken action to reduce inequalities in experience and outcomes as recommended by the three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, published on 30 March 2023.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As of 25 April 2024, 39 out of 42 integrated care boards (ICBs) have published Equity and Equality Action Plans. NHS England’s regional teams are supporting the remaining ICBs to publish their plans.
NHS England has provided more than £20 million in funding to local maternity and neonatal systems (LMNS) each year to lead improvement of maternity and neonatal care around objectives set out in the Three year delivery plan for maternity and neonatal services, a copy of which is attached. This includes implementing LMNS Equity and Equality Action Plans. NHS England has also invested an annual recurrent £10 million to target action at the 10% most deprived areas of England, who we know are more likely to experience adverse outcomes during pregnancy and birth.