Asked by: Christopher Chope (Conservative - Christchurch)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients died from hospital acquired pneumonia at the Great Western Hospital in Swindon in each of the first six months of 2025.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The UKHSA (UK Health Security Agency) Healthcare-Associated Infection (HCAI) Data (public HCAI statistics) does not currently publish routine counts of hospital-acquired pneumonia deaths. Pneumonia is not one of the standard HCAIs in the UKHSA dashboard.
The Office of National Statistics is the official source of mortality statistics for England. More information is available at the following link:
The Office for Health Improvements and Disparities (OHID) also provide details of mortality indicators that assess outcomes across a range of causes of death in England. These are available at the following link:
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 reasonable adjustments are in place for people with disabilities to access GPs without going through telephone services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practices (GP) are independent businesses contracted by the National Health Service to deliver essential services. As part of their contract, practices must provide online consultation tools. Online consultation tools are designed to accommodate a wide range of patient needs, including improving access to people with disabilities, making it easier for patients to book appointments, request prescriptions, and register remotely.
Since 1 October, GPs now must offer online access during core hours, from 08:00 to 18:30, bringing online access in line with walk-in and access, to improve convenience and reduce phone queues.
After a decade of declining satisfaction, patient experiences with contacting their GP have improved significantly. As of December 2025, 75.2% of patients report that they find it is easy to contact their GP, a 14.3% increase since July 2024, from 60.9%
Our approach is not a one size fits all. The GP Contract is also clear that all online tools must always be provided in addition to, rather than as a replacement for, other channels for accessing a GP. This means that patients should always have the option visiting their practice in person, or telephoning.
Asked by: Calvin Bailey (Labour - Leyton and Wanstead)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the proportion of men in England who undergo PSA testing outside of a formal screening programme; and whether this was accounted for in the UK National Screening Committee’s modelling of prostate cancer screening.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is taking men’s health seriously and we want to find the best way of reliably screening for prostate cancer. We are guided by the independent scientific advice of the UK National Screening Committee who are consulting on a draft recommendation relating to prostate cancer screening. However, as there is currently no prostate cancer screening programme for men, 100% of men in England who undergo prostate-specific antigen testing do so outside of a formal screening programme.
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, how many children in England are epileptic.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold information on the number of children in England with epilepsy. However, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guideline cites evidence that epilepsy affects about 533,000 in England and Wales, 112,000 of which are children and young people.
Asked by: Wendy Morton (Conservative - Aldridge-Brownhills)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 25 November 2025 to Question 90706, how the Neighbourhood Health Service will improve access to care in rural areas and communities with poor digital connectivity or low digital confidence in the West Midlands; what safeguards are in place to ensure that neighbourhood health centres do not lead to the downgrading or closure of existing GP surgeries or community hospitals; what evaluation he has made of previous neighbourhood care pilots in the region; and what timetable he has set for expanding the programme beyond wave 1, including the inclusion of additional West Midlands areas.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Neighbourhood Health Service will make it easier for people to access care closer to where they live, including in neighbourhood health centres. Delivery will be locally led, with systems determining how neighbourhood health is designed to meet local population need. This will factor in how services may need to look different across rural and urban areas.
The Neighbourhood Health Service will also move us towards a fully digitally enabled health service. We are striving for digital services to improve access, experiences, and outcomes for the widest range of people, based on their preferences, as any digital healthcare benefits will be limited if people remain digitally excluded.
Neighbourhood health provides the unifying framework that brings together what is already underway across primary care, community services, urgent care, prevention, digital, estates, and population health, and will build on existing assets and services rather than replacing them. We are intending to publish further guidance that will set-out how areas should work together to design neighbourhood health services around local needs and different population cohorts.
In September 2025, we launched the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP) in 43 places across England, including in East Birmingham. Collection of metrics is currently being piloted across all NNHIP sites. Systems are also encouraged to participate in the monthly Community of Practice, that aims to share learning and strengthen collective delivery.
Work is underway to consider the future direction of the NNHIP, and we will share an update on this as soon as we can.
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 he is taking to improve dementia care in hospitals.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We want a society where every person with dementia, and their families and carers, receive high-quality, compassionate care, from diagnosis through to end of life.
That is why the Government is committed to improving dementia care and is empowering local leaders with the autonomy they need to provide the best services to their local community, including those with dementia.
We have published the D100: Assessment Tool Pathway programme, which brings together multiple resources into a single, consolidated tool. This will help simplify best practice for system leaders and will help create communities and services where the best possible care and support is available to those with dementia. The tool can be found at the following link:
We will also deliver the first ever Frailty and Dementia Modern Service Framework to deliver rapid and significant improvements in quality of care and productivity. This will be informed by phase one of the independent commission into adult social care, which is expected this year.
The Frailty and Dementia Modern Service Framework will seek to reduce unwarranted variation and narrow inequality for those living with dementia, it will set national standards for dementia care and redirect National Health Service priorities to provide the best possible care and support.
Asked by: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 28 January 2026 to Question 107667, what information his Department holds on which ICB senior staff and Board members will be involved in the commissioning of neighbourhood health centres in North West London.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The selection of senior staff and board members involved in the commissioning of neighbourhood health centres will be determined by each integrated care board. As the North West and North Central London Integrated Care Boards are merging to form the West and North London Integrated Care Board from 1 April 2026, an interim structure is in place. The Chair and Chief Executive Officer have been appointed and, alongside other senior leads, will oversee commissioning of these services in accordance with forthcoming approval processes.
Asked by: Daniel Francis (Labour - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many children attending residential special schools have received an eyesight, hearing and dental check since April 2025.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Between 1 April 2025 and 23 January 2026, 11,485 sight tests have been conducted within a special educational setting. Data for the number of hearing and dental checks conducted is not held centrally.
Asked by: Steve Barclay (Conservative - North East Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made of the potential implications for his polices of the change in the number of available hospice beds in England over the last 12 months.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No formal assessment has been made of the potential implications for the Department’s policies of the change in the number of available hospice beds in England over the last 12 months.
However, we do recognise the difficult and challenging financial situation that many hospices are facing due to a range of concurrent cost pressures and that, as a result, some hospices have had to reduce the services they offer and the number of inpatient beds.
We have been supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We can now confirm we are providing a further £25 million in capital funding for hospices to spend in 2025/26.
We also recently announced that we are providing approximately £80 million of revenue funding for children and young people’s hospices in England over the next three financial years, from 2026/27 to 2028/29, giving them stability to plan ahead and focus on what matters most, caring for their patients.
The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Modern Service Framework (MSF) for England. As part of the MSF, we will consider contracting and commissioning arrangements. We recognise that there is currently a mix of contracting models in the hospice sector. By supporting integrated care boards to commission more strategically, we can move away from grant and block contract models. In the long term, this will aid sustainability and help hospices’ ability to plan ahead.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the press release entitled Patients in poorer areas to get better access to GPs, published on 9 October 2025, how funding will change in Bedfordshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is vital that funding for core primary medical services is distributed equitably between general practices (GPs) across the country so that resources are targeted where they are most needed. In October 2025 we launched a review of the GP funding formula (The Carr-Hill Formula), with the objective of better matching funding with higher need from poorer health.
Through our 10-Year Health Plan, it will be easier and faster to see a GP. We will end the 8:00am scramble for appointments, train more doctors, and guarantee consultations within 24 hours for those who need one. In October 2024, we invested £160 million into the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme to support the recruitment of 2,900 individual GPs into primary care networks across England, helping to increase appointment availability and improve care for thousands of patients. The new £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund will create additional clinical space within over 1,000 GPs across England. This investment will deliver more appointments and improve patient care. There are 13 approved schemes across the NHS Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB being supported by the fund.