Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what performance management arrangements were in place, if any, to ensure the take-up of flu and COVID-19 vaccinations by NHS staff in (1) 2022, and (2) 2023.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England plays an important role in supporting the National Health Service to run effective influenza and COVID-19 vaccination programmes for NHS staff.
As part of this, NHS England provides a range of resources and tools to support this offer and is working to increase influenza and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in 2024/25. In addition, improved Federated Data Platform reporting is providing more detailed regional uptake intelligence. NHS England is encouraging integrated care boards to work with the highest performing trusts in their region to share best practice and lessons learned, and provide additional support for those providers where uptake is low.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what performance management arrangements are in place, if any, to ensure the take-up of flu and COVID-19 vaccinations by NHS staff.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England plays an important role in supporting the National Health Service to run effective influenza and COVID-19 vaccination programmes for NHS staff.
As part of this, NHS England provides a range of resources and tools to support this offer and is working to increase influenza and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in 2024/25. In addition, improved Federated Data Platform reporting is providing more detailed regional uptake intelligence. NHS England is encouraging integrated care boards to work with the highest performing trusts in their region to share best practice and lessons learned, and provide additional support for those providers where uptake is low.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is the current status of the Building the Right Support Action Plan; and what plans they have to create a new Building the Right Support Action Plan to support reforms proposed in the Mental Health Bill.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Building the Right Support Action Plan, published in 2022, contains commitments which have not yet passed their delivery dates, including the commitment to reform the Mental Health Act.
We do not plan to create new actions in a new action plan while the bill is before Parliament. However, we recognise that this is a vitally important area, and we are considering how to ensure that more people with a learning disability and autistic people are supported well in the community, ahead of the commencement of the Mental Health Act reforms.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many applications they received for funding to establish Health Protection Research Units based in (1) the North East, (2) Yorkshire, and (3) the North West.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In September 2023, the Department funded National Institute for Health and Care Research launched a two-stage open competition to fund 13 new Health Protection Research Units (HPRUs). Each HPRU is a collaborative research partnership between the UK Health Security Agency and a university or group of universities. Overall, the HPRUs have been awarded £77 million of funding over five years for research to protect the public from health threats.
The following table sets out the applications received by region, and where the university is either the lead applicant or a collaborating partner on the HPRU application:
Region | University as the lead applicant | University as a collaborating partner |
North East |
| 1 |
Yorkshire |
| 2 |
North West | 2 | 7 |
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - 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 12 November (HL2220), what is the timescale for delivery of the proposed reforms to the patient care pathways; what conditions and pathways are in scope for these changes; in what settings this care will be delivered; who will be responsible for ensuring that these changes will be at lower cost; and how will progress be monitored and reported.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of the Government's commitment to returning to the 18-week constitutional standard from Referral to Treatment, work is underway and planned throughout 2025/26 to reform patient care pathways to ensure patients are seen in the settings which deliver better patient experience for lower cost.
This pathway reform will look at end-to-end pathways across primary, community and secondary care, and include diagnostics. NHS England is initially prioritising pathways in cardiology, respiratory, ear-nose-throat, gastroenterology and urology due to challenging demand, and is looking at opportunities to improve efficiency across other pathways, including through the use of diagnostic first pathways, integration across settings workforce development. There are ongoing reform efforts underway to address challenges identified in other specialities too. For example, in gynaecology, women’s health hubs are bringing together healthcare professionals and existing services to provide integrated women’s health services in the community to improve health outcomes for women, whilst reducing healthcare inequalities.
NHS England is leading national efforts to support pathway re-design, to take the best of clinically led innovation and practice across the country. Progress will be monitored and reported via the Oversight and Assessment Framework through which trusts report to integrated care boards; these are in turn shared with NHS England regional teams and filter into national reporting.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many out of area hospital admissions for mental health patients there were in (1) 2022, (2) 2023, and (3) 2024 to date.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the amount of adult acute mental health out of area placements in each of the last three years:
| 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 |
Inappropriate placements active during year | 4,870 | 4,655 | 5,900 |
Inappropriate placements active at year end | 605 | 695 | 805 |
Appropriate placements active during year | 470 | 320 | 325 |
Appropriate placements active at year end | 65 | 65 | 95 |
Total out of area placemetns active during year | 5,340 | 4,975 | 6,225 |
Total out of area placements active at year end | 670 | 760 | 900 |
Source: Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services, NHS England.
Note: Information about OAP placements in other mental health services, such as specialist mental health inpatient services or services for children and young people, is not available. The information provided is for financial years and goes up to March 2024 before the new data collection begins.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what financial assessment they have made to determine if the £600 million of grant funding for social care in 2025–26 will be sufficient to cover the cost of increased employer National Insurance contributions to social care providers.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government considered the cost pressures facing adult social care as part of the wider consideration of local government spending within the Spending Review process. This assessment took into account a wide range of factors, including changes to employer National Insurance contributions, and the National Living Wage increases.
In response to the range of pressures facing local authorities, the Government is providing a real-terms uplift to core local government spending power of approximately 3.2%, which includes £1.3 billion of new grant funding in 2025/26.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - 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 8 November (HL2000), from which budget lines and areas NHS England provided the additional funding outlined; how much, if any, of the additional funding came from allocated capital budgets and what the slippage this has caused; and how much, if any, funding came from non-capital budget lines and what are the opportunity costs this has incurred.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There have been no cuts to operational services to make the £2.3 billion of funding available. The majority came from central NHS England funding, held as part of the start year financial plans for this purpose. The remainder came from savings identified during the subsequent planning round, including taking a higher risk appetite on the extent to which underspends or savings would be identified during the course of the year. No funding came from savings on allocated capital budgets.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of the impact of the national insurance rise for employers on service levels for (1) community pharmacies, (2) NHS dentists, (3) care homes, (4) social care, and (5) GP services.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have taken necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at Autumn Budget. This enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26. The employer national insurance rise will be implemented in April 2025, with the Department setting out further details on allocation of funding for next year in due course.
Asked by: Lord Scriven (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many mental health patients under 18 years of age were placed in a hospital or unit more than 10 miles from their residence in (1) 2022, (2) 2023, and (3) 2024 to date.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
This information is not held in the format requested, as data on active out of area placements is not categorised by age.