Found: Letter from Baroness Merron (DHSC) to Lord Carlile of Berriew re: Tobacco and Vapes Bill, 16 March 2026

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 24 March (HL15339), whether they have plans to discuss with the charity Anthony Nolan the potential for children and young people with non-malignant conditions, who travel long distances to receive stem cell transplants and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy, to be included in the new travel cost scheme.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Through the National Cancer Plan for England, the Government is committing up to £10 million a year to a new fund open to all children and young people in England with cancer and their families regardless of income, to support them with the cost of travelling to and from their treatment. This commitment sits alongside wider action to transform cancer care for children and young people.

The Department is currently working with its partners to define the scope and parameters of the scheme and further detail will be announced in due course.

Currently, the National Health Service runs schemes in England to provide financial assistance for travel to a hospital or other NHS premises for specialist treatment or diagnostics tests, following referral from a primary healthcare professional. The Healthcare Travel Costs Scheme provides financial assistance to patients in England who do not have a medical need for transport, but who require assistance with the costs of travelling to receive certain NHS services. The Non-Emergency Patient Transport Services provide funded transport where it is considered essential to ensuring an individual’s safety, safe mobilisation, condition management, or recovery.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 19 March (HL15393), how many doctors have been subject to (1) suspension, and (2) erasure, for dishonestly claiming to be neurodivergent or have learning disabilities in 2025–26 up to and including the latest period for which figures are available.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department does not hold this data centrally.

The General Medical Council (GMC) is the regulator of all medical doctors, physician assistants (PAs), and physician assistants in anaesthesia (PAAs), still legally known as anaesthesia associates and physician associates, practising in the United Kingdom. It sets and enforces the standards all doctors, Pas, and PAAs must adhere to. The GMC is independent of the Government, is directly accountable to Parliament, and is responsible for operational matters concerning the discharge of its statutory duties.

The GMC owns data on its fitness to practise processes and publishes annual fitness to practise statistics reports on its website.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 19 March (HL15393), how many doctors have been subject to (1) suspension, and (2) erasure, for dishonestly claiming to be neurodivergent or have learning disabilities in 2024–25.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department does not hold this data centrally.

The General Medical Council (GMC) is the regulator of all medical doctors, physician assistants (PAs), and physician assistants in anaesthesia (PAAs), still legally known as anaesthesia associates and physician associates, practising in the United Kingdom. It sets and enforces the standards all doctors, Pas, and PAAs must adhere to. The GMC is independent of the Government, is directly accountable to Parliament, and is responsible for operational matters concerning the discharge of its statutory duties.

The GMC owns data on its fitness to practise processes and publishes annual fitness to practise statistics reports on its website.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Statement by Baroness Merron on 12 March (HLWS1401), what estimate they have made of how much higher real terms NHS mental health spending in England in 2026–27 would be if mental health spending as a proportion of overall NHS spending had not been reduced since 2023–24.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

As my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, set out in his Written Ministerial Statement on expected mental health spend on 12 March, National Health Service mental health spending is forecast to reach £16.1 billion in 2026/27, a real‑terms increase of £140 million compared with 2025/26. Since 2023/24, this represents £0.9 billion of real‑terms growth in mental health investment.

The Government does not have an estimate of how much higher spending would be in real terms if the share of spend had remained consistent since 2023/24. The change in proportion of total NHS spend allocated to mental health reflects significant additional investment in other core areas of the NHS, including technology and digital transformation, strengthened general practice, and the establishment of neighbourhood health centres. These wider improvements, even if not counted as “pure” mental health spend, will deliver important benefits for mental health patients, supporting earlier intervention and addressing key drivers of long‑term mental wellbeing.

The headline share of spend measure does not capture the full range of investment supporting mental health, including significant capital funding of £473 million over the next four years for rolling out community‑based mental health centres and mental health emergency departments.

While the share of spend rose prior to 2024 to 2025, it did not in itself deliver the improvements in outcomes that patients rightly expect. That is why, as set out in the 10‑Year Health Plan and the Medium‑Term Planning Framework, the Government is shifting from input‑based requirements towards a clearer focus on the outcomes that matter most for people with mental health needs.

Improving mental health services cannot simply be about more funding. We need a new approach that reduces waiting times, improves the quality of care, and strengthens prevention and early intervention. This includes ensuring people can access a wider range of support models within and beyond the NHS, helping them receive support earlier, avoid reaching crisis, and experience better outcomes.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 16 February (HL14349), on what evidence they base the conclusion that including wider societal benefits in vaccination appraisals would disadvantage programmes unable to evidence such benefits; and whether they have carried out a recent assessment of those benefits.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Our approach to decisions about vaccination programmes is informed by expert recommendations and advice from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). Working closely with the UK Health Security Agency‑based JCVI secretariat, the Department ensures that the cost-effectiveness methodology for assessing vaccination programmes enables the committee to advise on programmes that deliver the greatest health benefit to the greatest number of people.

Understanding the wider impacts of vaccination beyond health benefits is important in making the broader case for investment in vaccines and in encouraging uptake of vaccines amongst those who are offered them, and can be considered in exceptional cases in addition to the cost effectiveness assessment. In recognition of this, the Department strives to remain abreast of work demonstrating the benefits of vaccination to the wider economy.

However, changing the cost-effectiveness methodology itself to consider a broader range of costed benefits runs the risk of unintended consequences for vaccination programmes which cannot robustly demonstrate these benefits.

That is because decisions are required on how best to spend public funds. If wider socio-economic benefits can be robustly demonstrated for some vaccination programmes but not others due to data availability, there is a risk that changing the cost-effectiveness methodology to include wider benefits could result in programmes with high-quality data being considered more valuable. These programmes could therefore be prioritised for funding over other vaccination programmes, not because they deliver greater overall benefit, but because the data on their wider economic impact is more complete.

The potential impact of this, and potential consequences for the vaccine supply market, including vaccine price, would need to be carefully considered and risks properly evaluated, before any systematic change to methodology.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 9 February (HL13391), why the Chief Executive of South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board received contractual redundancy pay before the approval of the national model voluntary redundancy scheme by the Treasury in November 2025.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

As referred to in the answer to HL15722 and HL15723, the redundancy exercise arose from structural reform reducing the number of integrated care boards (ICBs) from 42 to 26, which resulted in the removal of a number of Chief Executive roles.

Contractual National Health Service redundancy arises where a role is removed as part of an organisational restructuring and the postholder’s employment is terminated on a compulsory basis, in line with their contractual NHS terms and conditions of service. This applies, for example, where an ICB is abolished or merged and the Chief Executive role therefore ceases to exist.

In contrast, the national model voluntary redundancy scheme applies only where an employer chooses to offer staff the option of a voluntary exit. These contractual redundancy arrangements pre-date the later development of the national model voluntary redundancy scheme which required HM Treasury’s approval before it could be offered by employers.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 9 February (HL13391), whether they were consulted before the announcement by South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board on 3 September 2025 of the chief executive's retirement; and what assessment they have made of the public transparency of announcements of retirement when the retiring individual is receiving a redundancy payment.

Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Department is not required to be consulted on and does not have responsibility for local announcements made by the integrated care boards (ICBs) about individual employment matters, including retirements. ICBs are independent statutory employers and are responsible for managing their own workforce and communications. They are expected to act in accordance with employment law, contractual obligations, and to communicate appropriately and transparently within those frameworks.

In the case of the South Yorkshire ICB, the redundancy payment referenced was contractual and arose from the removal of the role resultant from ICB reforms. It was not linked to the timing or manner of any subsequent announcement regarding the Chief Executive’s retirement.

Found: Baroness Merron Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women’s Health and Mental Health 6

Found: Baroness Merron Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women’s Health and Mental Health 6

Found: Letter dated 14/04/2026 from Alex Davies-Jones MP and Baroness Merron to Baroness O’Loan regarding clause