Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what advice they have received on foetal viability from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Neonatal Nurses Association and the British Maternal and Foetal Medicine Society, who published joint guidelines in 2019 on caring for premature babies born from the 22nd week of gestation.
Answered by Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist
While the Department monitors new evidence on viability, we have not received any such advice from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine, the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, the Neonatal Nurses Association and the British Maternal and Foetal Medicine Society.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to (1) ensuring men's health is made a ministerial priority, and (2) making improvements to men's health a specific strand of work within the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities.
Answered by Lord Kamall
Improving the health of both men and women is a ministerial priority for the Department. Evidence suggests that men are disproportionately affected by certain conditions, such as ischemic heart disease, are more likely to smoke or engage in other health harming behaviours and are more likely to die by suicide. We have committed to reduce stroke and heart attacks and the forthcoming publication of the new Tobacco Control Plan will target groups where smoking rates are not decreasing, including men. We are also investing in measures to prevent suicide.
While there are no current plans to make men’s health a specific strand of work, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities aims to improve the health of the population regardless of socio-economic background or gender.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what periodic review of literature they conduct in respect of the latest scientific evidence on foetal viability.
Answered by Lord Kamall
Officials regularly review new evidence on foetal viability. There is currently no clear consensus from the medical profession that the age of viability has reduced below 24 weeks.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Kamall on 7 December 2021 (HL3991), whether the additional data collected will include a record of the NHS numbers of patients who have had a termination procedure to enable effective tracking of both short and long term complications.
Answered by Lord Kamall
It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Kamall on 7 December 2021 (HL3991), whether the additional data collected will include data to monitor long term complications such as (1) fertility, including future miscarriage, and (2) future premature births.
Answered by Lord Kamall
It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the NHS England budget for relationship counselling in the latest available year.
Answered by Lord Kamall
This information is not held in the format requested as NHS England and NHS Improvement’s budgets are not allocated at the level of individual therapies. Individuals who are seen within Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) services can expect to receive a course of National Institute for Health and Care Excellence-recommended psychological therapy from an appropriately trained individual and to have their clinical outcomes monitored and reported. All National Health Service talking and psychological therapy services are expected to have capacity to offer couple therapy.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that local ambulance services can accurately track the impact of complications arising from home use of medical abortion pills; and what plans they have, if any, to use an Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System code for such cases.
Answered by Lord Kamall
The Department is undertaking a project to review the system of recording abortion complications data. We anticipate this work will be completed shortly. The review will cover all data on complications arising from abortion including home use of early medical abortion pills.
To improve the accuracy of the data collected, the Department is working closely with a range of statutory bodies, professional organisations and abortion providers to identify additional sources of information to complement complications data collected via HSA4 abortion notification forms. This would also improve the flow of data on abortion complications between different organisations, such as independent and NHS abortion providers and local ambulance services.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of reports that ambulance call-outs have risen following home use of medical abortion pills; and what steps they are taking in response.
Answered by Lord Kamall
We are considering all evidence submitted to the Government’s public consultation on whether to make permanent the temporary measure allowing for home use of both pills for early medical abortion, including evidence from ambulance services. The consultation asked questions on whether other NHS services had been affected by the temporary measure. We will publish our response in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how COVID-19 vaccines will be distributed to communal living facilities, including almshouses; and whether such vaccines will be delivered on site at these facilities.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The National Health Service has a tried and tested track record for delivering vaccination programmes. The NHS will work with existing health and social care partners across the system to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines can be deployed safely and effectively. Following the advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s, vaccines are currently being given to care home residents and staff, those over 80 years old, and health and social care workers, then amongst the rest of the population in order of age and risk.
The NHS has developed three different models of delivery to allow the vaccine to be available to a wider population through hospital hubs, vaccination centres, and local vaccination services. As the vaccination programme builds, it will gradually be able to extend to more practices/community settings, as well as mass vaccination centres in the coming months. More than 730 vaccination sites have already been established across the United Kingdom and hundreds more are opening to take the current total to over 1,000.
Asked by: Baroness Eaton (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government further to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, what plans they have to review the public health allocation formulae for local authorities.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The public health grant to local authorities is £3.279 billion in 2020-21, delivering real-terms funding growth to every local authority. Funding beyond 2020-21 will be set out following the Spending Review.