Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the remarks by Baroness Merron on 9 March (HL Deb col 9), what steps they plan to take to ensure the integration of care between the proposed National Care Service and the National Health Service.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to ensuring joined up health and care services. While the Independent Commission will inform the long-term direction of a national care service, the Government is already progressing reforms to strengthen the join up between services, so people experience more integrated and person-centred care.
We are developing Neighbourhood Health Services, which will allow more integrated working within the National Health Service, as well as between the NHS, local government, and a wide range of public services, including the voluntary, community, and social enterprise sector. The National Care Service and the Neighbourhood Health Service will play a critical role in helping people stay independent for longer, minimising the time that they need to spend in hospital or in long-term residential care.
Alongside this, we are improving national data and digital infrastructure, including driving the adoption of digital and social care records so people get the right care quicker, without needing to repeat their care needs or medical history.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they will publish separate, individual-level performance data for (1) brain, (2) liver, (3) lung, (4) stomach, (5) pancreatic, and (6) oesophageal, cancers under the Get Data Out programme.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Improving outcomes for rare cancer patients is a priority for the National Cancer Plan. The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) in NHS England, as the national cancer registry, collects diagnosis, treatment, and outcome data on cancer patients in England. All these cancer sites, such as brain, liver, lung, stomach, pancreatic, and oesophageal, are already included in NDRS’ Get Data Out (GDO) programme. Performance data is not included in GDO but incidence, treatment, survival, and routes to diagnosis statistics are available for the clinically meaningful groups of cancers included.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to allowing children and young people with non-malignant conditions who travel long distances to receive stem cell transplants and chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy access to the young cancer patient travel fund announced as part of the National Cancer Plan for England, published on 4 February.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The commitment to fund travel costs of up to £10 million per year to support children and young people with cancer is a key priority for the National Cancer Plan.
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.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
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 (HL14437), what evidence they have reviewed on the economic value and cost-effectiveness of point-of-care diagnostic testing technologies for cardiovascular disease prevention.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the value of point-of-care diagnostics in enabling earlier detection, reducing avoidable hospital admissions, and supporting more personalised care.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has produced clinical guidelines and heath technology guidance which make recommendations on the use of point-of-care testing (POCT) for a range of conditions and diseases. Decisions as to whether NICE will create new, or update existing, guidance are overseen by a prioritisation board, chaired by NICE’s Chief Medical Officer.
Decisions on the use and implementation of POCT are made locally by integrated care boards and providers, who design services in line with local population health needs and priorities.
The Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) Modern Service Framework will be published later this year and will prioritise ambitious, evidence-led, and clinically informed approaches to prevention, treatment, and care. As part of its development, we are engaging widely to identify and consider the role of emerging innovations across the CVD pathway.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they will take to prioritise rare cancers research in the next round of National Institute for Health and Care Research funding allocations; and what proportion of the overall cancer research budget will be allocated to (1) brain, (2) liver, (3) stomach, (4) pancreatic, and (5) oesophageal, cancers.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Government responsibility for delivering cancer research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.
The Government will implement the Rare Cancers Act to make it easier for clinical trials on rare cancers to take place in England.
The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health and care, including rare cancers. Our approach to funding research is through open and fair competition and peer review to ensure that the highest-quality proposals, most likely to deliver real impact for patients, are funded without imposing financial targets or limits.
Welcoming applications on rare cancers to all NIHR programmes enables maximum flexibility both in terms of amount of research funding a particular area can be awarded, and the type of research which can be funded.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to implement the automatic patient contact system for clinical trial participation introduced as part of the Rare Cancers Act 2026 to enable the timely identification and contact of patients diagnosed with less survivable cancers; and what safeguards they will put in place to prevent delays in that contact system that could exclude eligible patients from participation in clinical trials.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to ensuring that all patients, including those with a rare cancer, have access to cutting-edge clinical trials and innovative, lifesaving treatments.
As set out in our National Cancer Plan, the Government will implement the Rare Cancers Act, including Section 3 of the Act which will involve developing a service to ensure rare cancer patients can be automatically contacted about clinical trials.
The Government is currently scoping the technical requirements for this service and identifying a suitable route for delivery, before a development project is commenced. This will allow data sharing from the National Disease Registration Service to the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Be Part of Research registry tool. A detailed workplan and continued engagement with the Hon. Member Dr Scott Arthur, the bill sponsor in the House of Commons, will safeguard against delays which could impact the project.
Implementing the provisions of the Rare Cancers Act will make it easier for clinical trials on rare cancers to take place in England.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (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 Competition and Markets Authority's finding of excessive and unfair pricing in the supply of liothyronine tablets in the UK; and what progress they have made in discussions with manufacturers to reduce the cost of liothyronine.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There has been no assessment made of the Competition and Markets Authority’s findings, but no company should exploit the National Health Service. Anti-competitive behaviour, including excessive pricing, is a matter for the Competition and Markets Authority.
There have been no discussions with the manufacturers of Liothyronine regarding the cost of the product because the Government’s policy on generic medicines is to allow suppliers freedom of pricing for their products, relying on competition between suppliers and efficient purchasing by community pharmacies to deliver value for money for the NHS. This also means that companies can increase their prices when supply is low, or demand is high.
Several marketing authorisations for different suppliers have been granted for generic liothyronine since 2016, the NHS reimbursement price in primary care has reduced, and the price remains firmly below its peak from 2018.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they are making to facilitate data sharing between the NHS and the independent sector.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Information standards relating to information technology will enable the interoperability needed for information to be shared easily between the National Health Service and the independent sector.
The Health and Care Act 2022 made several changes to the information standard provisions of the 2012 act which will strengthen information standards for the health and adult social care system, including extending their scope to include private health and care providers and making compliance with standards mandatory. These provisions have now commenced.
The Single Patient Record will, in the future, be central to our vision for data within the NHS and social care. A seamlessly connected NHS where trusted data flows securely across all care settings, empowering patients, enabling clinicians with real-time insights, and unlocking breakthroughs in genomics, improve outcomes, and reduce inequalities. We will require public and private health and social care providers and their IT suppliers to share health and adult social care information with the Single Patient Record.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address regional disparities in thyroid treatment, particularly variations in prescribing liothyronine between different integrated care boards.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for supporting appropriate prescribing in their areas, taking account of this guidance and individual clinical circumstances.
National Health Service regions cascaded the Items which should not be routinely prescribed in primary care policy guidance, which includes a reference to liothyronine, to ICBs.
Asked by: Lord Kamall (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to build trust in digital healthcare.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises the importance of building trust in digital health systems and how critical this is to retaining public confidence. As part of its 10-Year Health Plan, the Government is providing a digitisation programme that supports National Health Service frontline clinicians and patients in improving outcomes and delivering care efficiently, effectively, and safely across the system.
The Government has also worked with NHS stakeholders and the public to ensure that the changes made respect privacy and confidentiality and maintain trust in the system. To help better understand the public's views, we carried out a series of engagement events, the reports for which were published online.
Our other initiatives include a revised NHS Data Security and Protection Toolkit which allows the NHS to assess their performance against national security standards and the development of secure data environments to help ensure that research and analysis requiring NHS data is done in a way that is protected, auditable, and which maintains privacy.
The training of NHS staff so that they are digitally confident and have skills in modern leadership and innovation, is another priority.