Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what was the annual spend by the health service on legal representation at inquests in the previous five years for which information is available.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS Resolution manages clinical negligence and other claims against the National Health Service in England. The following table shows the amounts paid in accordance with the rules of the Clinical Negligence Scheme for Trusts (CNST), to support trusts at inquests and for associated costs to investigate entitlement to compensation, in the last five years:
Payment Raised Year | Amount |
2018/19 | £2,968,153 |
2019/20 | £2,223,095 |
2020/21 | £1,614,820 |
2021/22 | £1,545,135 |
2022/23 | £1,623,211 |
Total | £9,974,414 |
Source: NHS Resolution
The CNST handles all clinical negligence claims against member NHS bodies where the incident in question took place on or after 1 April 1995, or when the body joined the scheme if that is later. NHS Resolution is not involved in any arrangements that an individual trust might make outside of the scheme.
Information on the total spend by NHS trusts regarding coroner’s inquests is not collated or held centrally.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to have any discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) about continuing to work with the rare condition community to improve engagement and involvement in decision-making from small organisations.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Department officials regularly meet with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to discuss a range of issues. Taking into account the advice and experience of people using services, as well as their carers or advocates, alongside that of health and social care professionals, commissioners, providers, and the public, is a central principle that guides the NICE’s work.
The NICE is committed to working with people who use health and social care services, their families, carers, and the public, as well as with voluntary and community sector organisations, and all of the NICE’s guidance is developed using a process that takes into account the opinions and views of the people who will be affected by them, to ensure their needs and priorities are reflected. The NICE gathers these perspectives through the membership of its committees, and through public consultations at various stages of guidance development. Stakeholders also have an opportunity to comment on the potential impact of the NICE’s guidance on health inequalities.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework has been fully implemented throughout the NHS to support learning and compassionate responses to families following any incidents.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Compliance with the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework (PSIRF) is now a contractual requirement for all services commissioned under the NHS Standard Contract. Implementing the PSIRF is an ongoing process and organisations’ approach to patient safety incident response can and should evolve over time. Work is also underway to explore implementation of the PSIRF in wider services within the National Health Service, such as primary care.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of high rates of childhood obesity on future diabetes rates; and what assessment they have made of the impact that this will have on the NHS's future spend on diabetes.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England has data from national diabetes audits showing the increasing numbers of young people being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes over the past five years. NHS England knows that 93.5% of children with Type 2 diabetes that are under the care of paediatric diabetes units are overweight or obese, with a body mass index above the 85th centile after correction for age and gender.
Core20PLUS5 – Children and Young People includes diabetes as a key clinical area and has two key areas of clinical focus, namely to increase access to real time continuous glucose monitoring and insulin pumps for children and young people in the most deprived quintiles and from ethnic minority backgrounds, and increase the proportion of children and young people with Type 2 diabetes receiving all the care processes recommended in guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence.
Key diabetes health metrics, such as blood glucose levels, are poorest in young adults aged between 19 and 25 years old. To address this age-related health inequality, 15 ‘Transition and Young Adult’ pilots were established by the NHS Diabetes Programme in 2022-2025 to test models of care for young adults with diabetes and those transitioning from paediatric to adult diabetes services. The pilots will be evaluated to inform the evidence base on how to best deliver care and improve outcomes for this group.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether NHS England, integrated care boards, and NHS Trusts have ensured that all maternity and neonatal staff have had the training, supervision, and support as required.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Regulated healthcare professionals need to meet the education and training standards set by their profession’s regulator. It is the responsibility of individual employers to ensure that their staff are trained and competent to carry out the role for which they are employed, and for making decisions about the ongoing professional training and development requirements of their staff. This includes responsibility for investing in the future of their staff, through providing continuing professional development funding.
Mandatory training for maternity staff is outlined in Core competency framework Version 2: Minimum standards and stretch targets, which provides both the minimum standards and stretch targets. Compliance with the core competency framework is overseen by integrated care boards and is incentivised through the Maternity Incentive Scheme which is administered by NHS Resolution. A copy of the framework is attached.
Support for staff working in maternity and neonatal services is provided by Professional Midwifery Advocates and Professional Nurse Advocates. This is a non-statutory model of clinical supervision. There are 1400 Professional Midwifery Advocates and approximately 300 Professional Nurse Advocates working in trusts in England.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to prevent children from developing diabetes at an early age.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is delivering an ambitious programme of work to help children and families maintain a healthier weight, which can prevent the onset of Type 2 diabetes.
The Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) is contributing to reductions in levels of childhood obesity by encouraging soft drinks producers to remove added sugar from products. Levels of sugar in SDIL products have reduced by 46%, removing over 46,000 tonnes of sugar.
The Department supports three million children through the Healthy Food Schemes, which encourage and contribute to a healthy and balanced diet.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they expect to publish a health prevention strategy.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Major Conditions Strategy outlines our approach in tackling six groups of major health conditions, by creating a health and care system that is faster, simpler, and fairer, focusing on prevention, proactive care and more person centred care. Since announcing the Major Conditions Strategy in January 2023, we have been working with a range of stakeholders in the health and care system, including those with lived experience, to identify what would make the most difference in tackling the six major conditions groups that account for around 60% of ill-health and early death in England.
We aim to publish the final strategy in summer of this year.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they intend to have any discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence about employing additional flexibility for rare condition medicines to take into consideration the implications of having a small population and potentially more expensive medicines.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department regularly meets with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to discuss a range of issues including access to and availability of medicines. NICE’s methods and processes for health technology evaluation have been proven to be suitable for medicines for rare diseases where companies price their products responsibly, and NICE introduced a number of changes to its methods and processes in 2022 that ensure that its processes are appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies.
NICE also operates a highly specialised technologies programme for the evaluation of a small number of medicines for the treatment of very rare diseases. As of 31 March 2024, NICE has recommended 88% of medicines licensed for the treatment of rare diseases for some or all of the eligible patient population, which is comparable to NICE’s approval rate for all medicines.
The Innovative Medicines Fund, building on the success of the Cancer Drugs Fund, provides a mechanism for consistent and transparent managed access process for companies offering promising non-cancer medicines at a responsible price. The Fund has already provided early access for National Health Service patients to several innovative new treatments, including for patients with rare diseases such as graft-versus-host disease and Wolman disease.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to hold discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence about its appraisal system to ensure it is sufficiently flexible to respond to treatments and medicines for rare diseases.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department regularly meets with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to discuss a range of issues including access to and availability of medicines. NICE’s methods and processes for health technology evaluation have been proven to be suitable for medicines for rare diseases where companies price their products responsibly, and NICE introduced a number of changes to its methods and processes in 2022 that ensure that its processes are appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies.
NICE also operates a highly specialised technologies programme for the evaluation of a small number of medicines for the treatment of very rare diseases. As of 31 March 2024, NICE has recommended 88% of medicines licensed for the treatment of rare diseases for some or all of the eligible patient population, which is comparable to NICE’s approval rate for all medicines.
The Innovative Medicines Fund, building on the success of the Cancer Drugs Fund, provides a mechanism for consistent and transparent managed access process for companies offering promising non-cancer medicines at a responsible price. The Fund has already provided early access for National Health Service patients to several innovative new treatments, including for patients with rare diseases such as graft-versus-host disease and Wolman disease.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether there are any further meetings planned for the Maternity Disparities Taskforce.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Maternity Disparities Taskforce has met six times. The taskforce will meet again in due course, to further explore and consider evidence-based interventions to tackle disparities in maternity outcomes and experience.
The taskforce is currently focused on developing a targeted pre-pregnancy toolkit, aimed at women from ethnic minorities and deprived areas, which will encourage healthy behaviours and planning for pregnancy by supporting women to make informed choices about their health and wellbeing.