Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address the disproportionate impact of climate change, such as flooding, disease, drought and famine, on developing and poorer countries; and what funding they have allocated to address this in collaboration with other international governments.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Increasing ambition and action on adaptation and loss and damage is a priority for the UK. From April 2011 to March 2023, it is estimated that UK International Climate Finance programmes have directly supported over 100 million people to adapt to the effects of climate change. At COP26, the UK COP Presidency secured a commitment from developed countries to at least double adaptation finance for developing countries by 2025. As the UK, we will triple our funding for adaptation from £500 million in 2019 to £1.5 billion in 2025. In September, the Prime Minister announced a pledge of $2billion (£1.62 billion) to the Green Climate Fund.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the overall budget of NHS England, how many staff it has, and how it measures its own performance in driving the delivery of services in primary and secondary care.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The overall budget for NHS England in 2023/24 is £172.1 billion. NHS England publishes quarterly data on the number of staff working in National Health Service Support Organisations and Central Bodies. The latest data for June 2023 shows there are 16,328 full time equivalent staff employed by NHS England.
In May 2023, NHS England published a delivery plan for primary care. Integrated care boards (ICBs) will lead the change for their local health systems as commissioners of primary care. The plan sets out how ICBs are expected to report progress, including though their public board reporting, with national and regional support being offered to any ICBs that are falling behind. A copy of the plan is attached.
On elective care, the NHS published a delivery plan in January 2022 setting out a clear vision for how the NHS will recover and expand elective services over three years. This includes targets to reduce maximum waiting times, so that waits of longer than a year for elective care are eliminated by March 2025, prioritising diagnosis and treatment so that 95% of patients needing a diagnostic test will receive it within six weeks by March 2025 and transforming the way the NHS provides elective care. A copy of the plan is attached.
On urgent and emergency care, performance measures include meeting the ambitions set out in our Delivery plan for recovering urgent and emergency care services, published in January 2023, including improving accident and emergency and ambulance performance to 76% of patients being admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours by March 2024, and improved ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average over 2023 to 2024, with further improvement against both of these measures towards pre-pandemic levels in 2024 to 2025. A copy of the plan is attached.