Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to address health inequalities on the basis of gender, race, and economic class; what their key priorities are in doing so; and what steps they will take to measure success.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is dedicated to building a fairer, more equal society by addressing the structural inequalities that drive poor health outcomes, especially for disadvantaged groups.
Our Health Mission in England will focus on addressing the social determinants of health, with the goal of halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions.
We are committed to prioritising women’s health as we build a National Health Service fit for the future. We are also taking action on the range of conditions that particularly affect men, including heart disease, liver disease, and cancer.
The Government is also committed to closing the black and Asian maternal mortality gap. Recognising the need for health inequalities to be central to all policy making, our health inequalities work has a renewed focus to bring together policy experts to reduce racial inequalities across health.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many incidents of patient records or personal data being accessed without due cause have been recorded in the most recent year for which figures are available.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Health and care organisations are required to submit data breach reports within 72 hours of an incident. Data breach incidents are reported to the Information Commissioners Office (ICO), who then investigate and decide what action to take. Notifiable breaches are those that are likely to result in a high risk to the rights and freedoms of the individual, referred to as the data subject. NHS England publishes the number of incidents reported through the Data Security and Protection Toolkit on its website. In 2023, 996 incidents were reported to the ICO, but not all of these would have involved patient details being accessed without due cause. The ICO publishes details on its website of incidents where it takes enforcement action.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that patient records and personal data are only accessible to those who need to view them, and to ensure connections between software systems in health facilities include suitable control measures for this risk.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
National IT systems must ensure that users can be identified correctly, and are given appropriate access. This is achieved using identity verification capabilities, including creating a national digital identity for each authorised user.
Each local National Health Service organisation which requires access to the national IT systems is required to set up its own local Registration Authority (RA) which consists of people and processes who are trained to create identities and grant access for their staff to the national IT systems. NHS England has published the RA Policy requirements with which every local NHS organisation that has an RA must comply. This reflects current best practice for identity and access management as informed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) guidance.
The RA Policy also allows non-NHS health and care organisations providing direct care to run their own RA service. RA hosting is subject to meeting requirements and assessment criteria, which are soon to be published.
The RA process includes the use of RA codes, assigned to professional users’ smartcards to give them access to the correct information within national IT systems.
The RA codes which are assigned for a specific user will allow that user to create and process referrals appropriately depending on their job role.
Local organisations which have an RA function are required to have an RA audit policy and conduct annual audits on NHS Smartcard usage as part of their RA governance. RA Managers (those responsible for administering the RA function within an organisation) must implement a process to run the RA reports on a regular basis.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the extent of racism and discrimination within the NHS; what steps NHS England are taking to collate data on this issue; and how they disseminate best practice to improve working culture within the NHS.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The National Health Service is one of the most diverse organisations in this country. As of September 2023, 27.3% of hospital and community health service staff reported an ethnic minority background. However, data shows that disabled staff, staff from ethnic minority background, and staff with other protected characteristics face a worse experience of working in the NHS when it comes to abuse, bullying and harassment, and career progression.
Since 2016, NHS England has published an annual Workforce Race Equality Standard (WRES) report. Implementation of the WRES is a requirement for NHS commissioners and NHS healthcare providers, including independent organisations through the NHS standard contract. The WRES enables NHS organisations to better understand how they are performing against nine indicators covering issues such as board representation, career progression, and bullying and harassment. They are required to develop action plans to progress and improve against the indicators.
In June 2023, NHS England published the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Improvement Plan that sets out targeted actions to address prejudice and discrimination in the NHS workforce. NHS England has also provided guidance to assist trusts and integrated care boards in adopting an improvement approach to the implementation of this plan. It is supported by a repository of good practice and a dashboard, to enable organisations to measure progress.
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 - Lord Chamberlain (HM Household)
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 - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
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.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what (1) humanitarian, and (2) financial, assistance they are providing to Pakistan in relation to the floods in the Sindh province and related areas.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The UK stands shoulder to shoulder with Pakistan as it faces the consequences of the recent devastating flooding. The UK was one of the first countries to announce funding (£1.5 million) to respond to the humanitarian need. We have now increased this to £16.5 million to support flood relief efforts. UK aid will be targeted towards the hardest hit areas of Sindh and other provinces. The UK contribution is also now over 10 per cent of the joint UN and Government of Pakistan emergency appeal ($160 million). This flooding demonstrates how climate change is making extreme weather events both more intense and more frequent.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether Ukrainians entering the country through the proposed Local Sponsorship Scheme for Ukraine will (1) be protected by existing refugee safeguarding policies, (2) have the right to seek employment, and (3) be eligible to claim free healthcare, dentistry and social security benefits.
Answered by Lord Greenhalgh
Further to the answer given by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, details of the sponsorship scheme for Ukraine will be set out in due course.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any plans (1) unilaterally, or (2) in conjunction with the government of Azerbaijan, to commemorate or mark on 26 February the 30th anniversary of the killings in the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly; and whether they have (a) held bilateral discussions, or (b) supported action, to ensure that such hostilities to do not take place again and that there is no escalation of violence in Azerbaijan, in the light of emerging issues in Armenia and Russia.
Answered by Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
The events of February 1992 were a tragic episode in Azerbaijan's history, and were strongly condemned by the UK Government at the time. Such hostilities should never take place again. The UK Government has not yet made plans to mark this anniversary of the date.
The UK Government remains deeply committed to stability and security across the South Caucasus region and continues to work through bilateral channels and multilateral fora in pursuit of those goals. This includes our continuing support for the efforts of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Minsk Group Co-Chairs to facilitate discussions to secure a sustainable, peaceful resolution to ongoing tensions between Azerbaijan and Armenia.
Asked by: Baroness Manzoor (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the health inequalities that have arisen as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in cardiovascular diseases; and what steps they are taking to rectify this issue.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government has made no assessment of the health inequalities from the COVID-19 pandemic for cardiovascular diseases. However, NHS England is collating audits data and feedback from NHS services. The NHS has made clear that a central part of responding to COVID-19 and restoring services must be to increase the scale and pace of system-wide action to tackle inequalities, with a particular focus on the issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The most recent NHS England and NHS Improvement planning guidance outlined the health inequalities delivery strategy from a national and local perspective which prioritised eight key urgent actions to address inequalities in NHS provision and outcomes. Action four emphasises the need to accelerate preventative programmes which proactively engages those at greatest risk of poor health outcomes, which includes prioritising and addressing cardiovascular disease.