Asked by: Chris Hinchliff (Labour - North East Hertfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the planned start date is for the review into the mental health of parents of children with serious illness.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government will commission a report on the mental health impacts of a child’s terminal diagnosis on their families. This will include a review of the available evidence and cost effectiveness. It will be carried out with reference to the recently announced independent review into mental health conditions, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and autism, and the wider Government action to support vulnerable children suffering from trauma.
Ministers from the Department will meet with stakeholders to discuss the scope of the report. A timetable for the report will be confirmed in due course.
Asked by: Claire Young (Liberal Democrat - Thornbury and Yate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of providing compensation to patients treated with rectopexy mesh for rectal prolapse as part of its work on redress following the recommendations of the Hughes Report, published on 7 February 2024.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the Hughes Report, the Government is carefully considering the Patient Safety Commissioner’s (PSC’s) recommendations, including the proposed approaches to redress for those harmed by pelvic mesh. The Hughes Report did not cover patients treated with rectopexy mesh for rectal prolapse. This is because rectal prolapse does not fall within the original definition of Pelvic Organ Prolapse that the PSC and the Independent Medicines and Medical Devices Safety Review adopted, namely a pelvic organ bulging into the vagina.
However, that is not to dismiss the very real concerns of these patients. We are considering whether rectopexy mesh should be included in the scope of the work on redress, as for example, NHS England has carried out a market engagement event to understand which of its currently commissioned mesh centres would be willing to provide mesh removal surgery for colorectal patients. A decision around which centres will be designated will be made following findings from the audit of existing mesh centres.
This is a complex, cross-Government policy area involving multiple organisations. This work requires coordinated input from several departments, and we will provide a further update in due course. I met with the PSC in December 2025, to discuss progress following the Hughes Report. I have subsequently written to Dr Hughes about the actions we are undertaking to ensure service-level interventions are embedded in the National Health Service specific to making a real-life impact on those affected by pelvic mesh and valproate.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the training provided to GPs on prescribing risk-reducing drugs to women at increased risk of breast cancer.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practitioners (GPs) are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up-to-date and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This activity should include taking account of new research and developments in guidance, such as that produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, to ensure that they can continue to provide high quality care to all patients.
We are investing an additional £1.1 billion in GPs, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.4 billion in 2025/26, the biggest increase in over a decade. The 8.9% boost to the GP Contract in 2025/26 is bigger than the 5.8% growth to the National Health Service budget as a whole, demonstrating our commitment to shifting resources to the community.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of establishing a national register to capture and integrate the data of all women at increased risk of breast cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England provides England’s national resource for data and analytics on cancer, rare diseases, and congenital conditions.
The NDRS already serves as a national register for women at very high risk of breast cancer. NDRS curates and quality assures the collected data to ensure sufficient accuracy and completeness. The NDRS works closely with the very high risk National Breast Screening Programme to ensure safe and robust identification of women at very high risk of cancer. The integration of this data within the wider NDRS cancer data infrastructure maximises the use of this data which helps with service planning, evaluation, and improvement, and reduces the fragmentation and siloing that would occur with standalone registers.
Asked by: Ruth Jones (Labour - Newport West and Islwyn)
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 ensure the accuracy of data collected on all women at increased risk of breast cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England provides England’s national resource for data and analytics on cancer, rare diseases, and congenital conditions.
The NDRS already serves as a national register for women at very high risk of breast cancer. NDRS curates and quality assures the collected data to ensure sufficient accuracy and completeness. The NDRS works closely with the very high risk National Breast Screening Programme to ensure safe and robust identification of women at very high risk of cancer. The integration of this data within the wider NDRS cancer data infrastructure maximises the use of this data which helps with service planning, evaluation, and improvement, and reduces the fragmentation and siloing that would occur with standalone registers.
Asked by: Shockat Adam (Independent - Leicester South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of extending Business Rates reimbursements to Community Pharmacies.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the Autumn Budget 2025, the Government made hard choices in order to protect the National Health Service in England and continue to prioritise reducing waiting times. We have also stepped in to cap bills and help businesses, as part of a £4.3 billion support package.
This year, we have also increased funding to community pharmacies to almost £3.1 billion, the largest uplift in funding for any part of the NHS across 2024/25 and 2025/26.
The Department will consult Community Pharmacy England on any proposed changes to reimbursement and remuneration of pharmacy contractors for 2026/27 shortly.
Asked by: Lee Dillon (Liberal Democrat - Newbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to implement Hospice UK’s four-point plan for fair hospice funding.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Hospice UK’s four-point plan highlights key challenges faced by the hospice sector. We are addressing these concerns through wider reforms. The Government is developing a Palliative Care and End-of-Life Care Modern Service Framework (MSF) for England. The MSF will drive improvements in the services that patients and their families receive at the end of life and enable integrated care boards (ICBs) to address challenges in access, quality, and sustainability through the delivery of high-quality, personalised care. This will be aligned with the ambitions set out in the recently published 10-Year Health Plan.
Through our MSF, we will closely monitor the shift towards the strategic commissioning of palliative care and end-of-life care services to ensure that services reduce variation in access and quality. Contracting and commissioning arrangements will be considered as part of this work. We recognise there is currently a mix of contracting models across the hospice sector, and by supporting ICBs to commission more strategically, we can move away from grant-based and block-contract models and help hospices’ ability to plan ahead.
As part of the MSF’s development, we have invited colleagues from a range of organisations, including Hospice UK, to engage in this process. It would not be right to pre-empt exactly what will be in the final MSF at this time, as we develop it with our palliative care and end-of-life care stakeholders.
Additionally, the Government has also invested significantly in the hospice sector, including £125 million of capital funding for adult and children and young people’s hospices in 2024/25 and 2025/26, with a further approximately £80 million of revenue funding support for children and young people’s hospices over the next three years in England.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how the boundary between NHS and local authority responsibilities is applied in practice when assessing eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) is a package of ongoing care that is arranged and funded solely by the National Health Service where the individual has been assessed and found to have a ‘primary health need’.
An individual has a primary health need if, having taken account of all their needs, the main aspects or majority of the care they require is focused on addressing and/or preventing health needs. In deciding whether a person has a primary health need, the integrated care board (ICB) must consider whether the support required by that person is above the limits of what the local authority can provide. Under Section 22 of the Care Act 2014, local authorities are generally prevented from meeting needs by offering services that the NHS must provide under the National Health Service Act 2006.
As far as is reasonably practicable, the ICB must consult with the relevant local authority before making any decision about an individual’s eligibility for CHC.
Asked by: Al Pinkerton (Liberal Democrat - Surrey Heath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how nursing needs are (a) assessed and (b) categorised when determining eligibility for NHS Continuing Healthcare.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC) is a package of ongoing care that is arranged and funded solely by the National Health Service where the individual has been assessed and found to have a ‘primary health need’.
An individual has a primary health need if, having taken account of all their needs, the main aspects or majority of the care they require is focused on addressing and/or preventing health needs. In deciding whether a person has a primary health need, the integrated care board (ICB) must consider whether the support required by that person is above the limits of what the local authority can provide. Under Section 22 of the Care Act 2014, local authorities are generally prevented from meeting needs by offering services that the NHS must provide under the National Health Service Act 2006.
As far as is reasonably practicable, the ICB must consult with the relevant local authority before making any decision about an individual’s eligibility for CHC.
Asked by: Tom Morrison (Liberal Democrat - Cheadle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what processes are in place for families to seek remedial action against GPs who fail to correctly diagnose patients who shortly afterwards pass away.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
If a family wishes to make a formal complaint about services provided by a general practice, they should write to the practice manager. If the family is not comfortable raising a complaint directly, they can instead raise their concerns with their local National Health Service integrated care board, with NHS England or with their local Healthwatch, the independent consumer champion for health and social care. Further information about the NHS complaints procedure and Healthwatch can be found, respectively, at the following two links:
www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/about-the-nhs/how-to-complain-to-the-nhs