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Written Question
Nutrition
Wednesday 27th March 2024

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, whether she has had recent discussions with the food and drink sector on taking steps to provide healthy alternatives to products that are high in (a) fat, (b) sugar and (c) salt.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Discussions have been held by officials with the food and drink sector on taking steps to provide healthier alternatives to products that are high in salt since 2004, high in sugar since 2014, and high in calories since 2017. Provision of healthier alternatives to products that are high in saturated fat have been part of those discussions.

My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care meets regularly with external stakeholders on a variety of issues. These ministerial meetings are routinely published on a quarterly basis in arrears on the GOV.UK website. However, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will recuse herself on departmental issues relating to outside interests, all of which have been declared to the House and under the Ministerial Code.


Written Question
Pharmacy: Training
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Diana Johnson (Labour - Kingston upon Hull North)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many training places for pharmacists in England there were in each year since 2010.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The number of training places for pharmacists in England is uncapped and determined each year by health education providers. The following table shows the number of starters on the Foundation Pharmacist Training Scheme, which is the final year of training and must be completed by all pharmacists before they can sit their registration exam, for each year since 2010/2011:

Training Year

Starters on Pharmacist Foundation Training Scheme

2010/2011

2367

2011/2012

2518

2012/2013

2600

2013/2014

2619

2014/2015

2767

2015/2016

2768

2016/2017

2785

2017/2018

2845

2018/2019

2854

2019/2020

2566

2020/2021

2583

2021/2022

2392

2022/2023

2598

2023/2024

2626

Source: General Pharmaceutical Council

Note: Data may include trainees studying in England, but upon successful completion, they may register in other areas of the United Kingdom.

As set out in the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, the ambition is to expand training places for pharmacists by 29% to approximately 4,300 by 2028/29, and to almost 5,000 by 2031/32.


Written Question
Parkinson's Disease: Health Services
Wednesday 27th March 2024

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, what steps she is taking to help ensure patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease receive an appointment with a specialist within six weeks.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) guidance, Parkinson’s disease: Diagnosis and management in primary and secondary care, updated in 2017, sets out best practice for clinicians in the identification and treatment of Parkinson’s disease in line with the latest available evidence. The guidance states that if Parkinson’s disease is suspected, people should be referred quickly and without treatment to a specialist with expertise in the differential diagnosis of this condition.

We expect integrated care boards (ICBs) and National Health Service trusts to have due regard to relevant NICE guidelines. It is the responsibility of ICBs to make available the appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, in line with these NICE guidelines.

More generally, cutting waiting lists is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities. We are making good progress on tackling the longest waits, to ensure patients get the care they need when they need it. Ambitions to eliminate long waits were set out in the elective recovery plan, with the overall aim of eliminating waits of over a year for elective care, by March 2025.

To facilitate this across elective services, we are increasing activity, with plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25. This includes expanding capacity through the creation of a new network of community diagnostic centres, and maximising all available independent sector capacity.


Written Question
Postural Tachycardia Syndrome
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Catherine West (Labour - Hornsey and Wood Green)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to support people with postural tachycardia syndrome.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

Services for postural tachycardia syndrome (PoTS) are locally commissioned and, as such, it is the responsibility of the local commissioning teams within integrated care boards to ensure that their locally commissioned services meet the needs of their local population.

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has produced a clinical knowledge summary, last revised in November 2023, which outlines the method healthcare professionals should follow for diagnosing PoTS. This summary is available at the following link:

https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/blackouts-syncope/diagnosis/assessment/

Clinical knowledge summaries are evidence-based summaries designed to support healthcare professionals in primary care, by providing them with a readily accessible summary of the current evidence base and practical advice on best practice.


Written Question
Oral Cancer: Diagnosis
Wednesday 27th March 2024

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 information his Department holds on the number of people diagnosed with mouth cancer in the last twelve months.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The information requested is not available for the last twelve months. The most recent data available from 2021 shows 9,018 people were diagnosed with mouth cancer in England. Further information is available at the following link:

https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/cancer-registration-statistics/england-2021---summary-counts-only


Written Question
Social Services: LGBT+ People
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Anneliese Dodds (Labour (Co-op) - Oxford East)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions she has had with Skills for Care on levels of take up of their LGBT+ Learning Framework, published in February 2023.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department has had no recent discussions around levels of take up of the LGBTQ+ learning framework.


Written Question
Obesity
Wednesday 27th March 2024

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, what recent assessment she has made of the implications for her policies of trends in the level of obesity; and what steps her Department is taking to help tackle obesity.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is delivering a wide range of measures to reduce the numbers of both adults and children who are overweight, or living with obesity. To date this includes legislative measures to limit the advertising, and location and price promotion, of less healthy products, and to ensure calorie levels are provided on menus when eating out of the home. Impact assessments for the legislated measures suggest there will be substantial health benefits, as well as savings to the National Health Service, accrued.

We have seen important successes through the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL), which between 2015 and 2020 has seen sugar levels reduced by 46% in, and over 46,000 tonnes of sugar removed from, products in scope of the levy. Data from the National Diet and Nutrition Survey from 2019 shows that sugar intakes have fallen for some age groups. In older children and adolescents, this appears to be partly driven by soft drinks contributing less to sugar intakes, likely as a result of the changes made to drinks included in the SDIL. Further information from the survey is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/ndns-results-from-years-9-to-11-2016-to-2017-and-2018-to-2019

A paper on the association of obesity in primary school children and the SDIL suggests that the reduction in the sugar content of soft drinks delivered by the SDIL could have prevented up to 5,000 cases of obesity in girls in the last year of primary school. Reductions were greatest in girls who attended schools in the 40% of the most deprived areas. Further information from the paper is available at the following link:

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1004160

The voluntary reformulation programme requires businesses reduce levels of sugar, salt, and calories in everyday food and drink. Levels of sugar have reduced in breakfast cereals, yogurts, and pre-packed milk-based drinks by 15%, 13.5%, and 29.7% respectively, between 2015 and 2020. Levels of salt have reduced in some products by 20%.


Written Question
Electronic Cigarettes
Wednesday 27th March 2024

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, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of taking steps to create a vape-free generation.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Smoking is the number one cause of ill-health, disability, and death, responsible for approximately 80,000 deaths a year in the United Kingdom, causing around one in four cancer deaths. It costs our country £17 billion a year, and puts a huge burden on the National Health Service. There is no more dangerous product that is legally sold in our shops than tobacco, a product that will kill two thirds of its users.

The health advice on vaping is clear, vaping can play a role in helping adult smokers to quit, but if you don’t smoke, don’t vape. Vaping should never be used by, or targeted at, children, especially given the highly addictive nature of nicotine.

This is why we have announced strong measures to reduce the appeal, availability, and affordability of vapes to children, whilst ensuring that vapes remain an available quit aid for adult smokers. We will also ban the sale and supply of disposable vapes, which are clearly linked to the recent rise in vaping in children.


Written Question
Kidneys: Transplant Surgery
Wednesday 27th March 2024

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, what steps she is taking to help reduce waiting times for children in need of kidney transplants.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

We are working with NHS Blood and Transplant to help reduce waiting times for children in need of kidney transplants. This includes implementing initiatives to improve the use of living donor kidney transplantation in paediatric centres, engaging with transplant centres to review patients who are too unwell to receive a transplant, and reducing long waiters, which are patients who wait more than 104 days for a transplant.

Nation-wide campaigns have been developed to increase paediatric registrations on the organ donor register, for example Ralph’s campaign, and the school’s education programme has been refreshed for younger children. A paediatric perfusion programme is also being developed to increase the use of kidneys from donors after circulatory death for paediatric patients.


Written Question
Hospitals: Homelessness
Wednesday 27th March 2024

Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)

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 prevent patients (a) experiencing and (b) at risk of homelessness from being discharged from hospital to no fixed abode.

Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department is committed to promoting safe and timely discharge for people experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness, to appropriate accommodation. Between 2020 and 2022, the Department delivered £16 million to 17 local sites, to pilot Out of Hospital Care Models to people experiencing homelessness following a hospital stay. These models provide interim accommodation, care, and support while full assessments of individual needs are carried out. There are positive preliminary findings, and a final evaluation is due next month. From this we will share learning to encourage local areas to adopt similar models.

Improving how discharges are arranged for people experiencing, or at risk of homelessness, is also supported by our wider work to improve discharge processes. We have ensured every acute hospital has access to a care transfer hub to manage discharge for people with more complex needs, who need extra support. Furthermore, in January 2024 the Department published guidance on discharging people at risk of or experiencing homelessness to support staff involved in planning safe and supportive discharge of these patients from hospital. This guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/discharging-people-at-risk-of-or-experiencing-homelessness/discharging-people-at-risk-of-or-experiencing-homelessness