Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of (1) the prevalence of, and (2) regional disparities in (a) child stunting, and (b) malnutrition in the general population, in the United Kingdom.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In England, the prevalence of childhood stunting was 1.5% for children aged four years olds in 2021/22, defined by having a height for age below minus two standard deviations from the median of the World Health Organisation (WHO) child growth standard. Regional data for England has not been published.
The Welsh Government has published data from its Child Measurement Programme on the proportion of children aged between four and five years old with low height, defined as height less than the second centile of the British 1990 (UK90) growth reference. The following table shows this data including breakdown by health boards:
Geography | Low height (%) |
Wales | 0.5 |
Betsi Cadwaladr UHB | 0.6 |
Powys THB | 0.8 |
Hywel Dda UHB | 0.5 |
Swansea Bay UHB | 0.7 |
Cwm Taf Morgannwg UHB | 0.4 |
Cardiff and Vale UHB | 0.3 |
Aneurin Bevan UHB | 0.4 |
Source: Welsh Governmant Child Measurement Programme
Note: This is not directly comparable to the England data as the England data uses the WHO child growth standard to classify child height.
Data on stunting for children is not published for Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The prevalence of malnutrition was 7.3% for children aged four years old in England in 2021/22, defined by having a weight for height greater than two or less than two standard deviations from the median of the WHO child growth standards. Regional data for England has not been published. Data on malnutrition for children is not published for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, whilst data on malnutrition for adults is not published for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what Official Development Assistance has been given to (1) Nigeria, and (2) Ghana, to support the training and employment of clinical staff in the healthcare systems of each of these countries; and what plans they have to provide further assistance to these countries.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
In 2021/22, the Government has allocated £3.6 million to health workforce development programmes in Ghana. This includes programmes focussed on improving workforce planning and governance, training new healthcare workers in refugee camps and developing training curricula. Through the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office, we have previously invested in health programmes in Nigeria and Ghana, such as the WomenForHealth Programme in Nigeria and mental health nurse training in Ghana. No decisions on specific programmes and geographical areas in the future have yet been made.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to agree memoranda of understanding with countries affected by the recruitment of clinical staff by the NHS to regulate that practice and avoid unforeseen consequences for the healthcare systems of those countries.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We have made no specific assessment of the impact of recruitment by the NHS of clinical staff trained and employed in low- and middle-income countries on the healthcare systems of those countries. The Government routinely monitors international recruitment activity and where there are significant workforce flows into the National Health Service, particularly from low and middle-income countries, we are engaging with those nations on how this recruitment could be managed through Government to Government agreements.
International recruitment is regulated through the Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health and Social Care Personnel, which is available in an online only format. The Code prevents active international recruitment from a list of 47 countries, unless there is a Government to Government agreement in place to manage international recruitment. These countries have been identified by the World Health Organization as having health economies with significant and unsustainable workforce challenges.
We have signed agreements with the Governments of the Philippines, Kenya and Malaysia to manage healthcare worker recruitment. As these are new agreements within the last six months, no assessment has yet been made of the impact. Any further agreements will be published online once they have been signed.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many memoranda of understanding they have agreed with other countries to regulate the recruitment of clinical staff by the NHS; and what assessment they have made of the related impact of each.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We have made no specific assessment of the impact of recruitment by the NHS of clinical staff trained and employed in low- and middle-income countries on the healthcare systems of those countries. The Government routinely monitors international recruitment activity and where there are significant workforce flows into the National Health Service, particularly from low and middle-income countries, we are engaging with those nations on how this recruitment could be managed through Government to Government agreements.
International recruitment is regulated through the Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health and Social Care Personnel, which is available in an online only format. The Code prevents active international recruitment from a list of 47 countries, unless there is a Government to Government agreement in place to manage international recruitment. These countries have been identified by the World Health Organization as having health economies with significant and unsustainable workforce challenges.
We have signed agreements with the Governments of the Philippines, Kenya and Malaysia to manage healthcare worker recruitment. As these are new agreements within the last six months, no assessment has yet been made of the impact. Any further agreements will be published online once they have been signed.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of recruitment by the NHS of clinical staff trained and employed in low- and middle-income countries on the healthcare systems of those countries.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We have made no specific assessment of the impact of recruitment by the NHS of clinical staff trained and employed in low- and middle-income countries on the healthcare systems of those countries. The Government routinely monitors international recruitment activity and where there are significant workforce flows into the National Health Service, particularly from low and middle-income countries, we are engaging with those nations on how this recruitment could be managed through Government to Government agreements.
International recruitment is regulated through the Code of Practice for the International Recruitment of Health and Social Care Personnel, which is available in an online only format. The Code prevents active international recruitment from a list of 47 countries, unless there is a Government to Government agreement in place to manage international recruitment. These countries have been identified by the World Health Organization as having health economies with significant and unsustainable workforce challenges.
We have signed agreements with the Governments of the Philippines, Kenya and Malaysia to manage healthcare worker recruitment. As these are new agreements within the last six months, no assessment has yet been made of the impact. Any further agreements will be published online once they have been signed.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to compensate (1) Ghana, (2) Nigeria, and (3) other Commonwealth countries, for the training costs of nurses recruited from these countries to fill vacancies in the NHS in England.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
Information on the number of nurses recruited internationally by the National Health Service (NHS) is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact on health care in (1) Ghana, (2) Nigeria, and (3) other Commonwealth countries, of the recruitment by the NHS of nurses from these countries.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
Information on the number of nurses recruited internationally by the National Health Service (NHS) is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the numbers of nurses recruited from (1) Ghana, (2) Nigeria, and (3) other Commonwealth countries in the last three years for which data exists in order to fill the vacancies in the NHS in England.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
Information on the number of nurses recruited internationally by the National Health Service (NHS) is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the incidence of stress-related illness and suicide amongst Black, Asian and minority ethnic staff working for the NHS (1) before, and (2) after, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic; and what action has (a) Public Health England, and (b) the NHS, taken to address this.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Data on the incidence of stress-related illness and suicide amongst black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) National Health Service staff is not made publicly available due to concerns about misuse.
In April, the Chief People Officer at NHS England and NHS Improvement launched a comprehensive programme to address the impact of COVID-19 on BAME staff in the NHS. This has included work to update the health and wellbeing offer which is available to all staff to specifically address BAME staff.
Public Health England is developing a Real Time Suspected Suicide Surveillance system. The pilot is currently collecting data from local areas in England, as this system is in the pilot stage, data are not yet available. Ethnicity and employment status are specified within the requested minimum dataset, with the option to include occupation as an additional data item.
Asked by: Lord Boateng (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of Black, Asian, and minority ethnic people; and what action has been taken by (1) Public Health England, and (2) the NHS, taken to address any such impact.
Answered by Lord Bethell
Public Health England (PHE) has been monitoring the mental health and wellbeing impacts of COVID-19, including the impact on people from black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds. The latest report concluded that the evidence of association between ethnicity and pandemic related impacts on mental health and wellbeing remains inconclusive; some studies report disproportionate effects on some but not all BAME groups, and others reporting no relationship. PHE continues to track and report on the impact as more evidence becomes available.
NHS England is working closely with ethnic minority experts by experience, health professionals, voluntary and community partners and others to support rapid knowledge and information sharing to encourage timely access to National Health Service mental health services, and just as importantly, good ethnic minority experiences within those services.
PHE is running the Better Health-Every Mind Matters campaign to support children and young people’s mental wellbeing. It is working with BAME organisations and experts to deliver campaign messages in culturally-appropriate ways, through dedicated BAME media channels, translated into other languages, where required.