Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 1 December 2025 (HL12313), what Core20Plus5 indicators they have developed and embedded to monitor access, experiences and outcomes for people with learning disabilities; and how this information will be reported upon nationally.

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

NHS England has put in place indicators designed to monitor access, experience, and outcomes for Core20PLUS populations, including people with a learning disability who are expected to be identified as a priority group. The Core20PLUS5 indicator for learning disability is the ‘Percentage of patients aged 14+ on GP learning disability registers who received an annual health check'. This is reported nationally as part of the NHS Oversight Framework.

There are clear expectations of local systems to improve outcomes for people with a learning disability and governance through existing frameworks. NHS England has published a Statement on Information on Health Inequalities, avaiable on the NHS.UK website in an online only format, which sets out the data that integrated care boards (ICB) are expected to collect. This includes measures relating to percentage of learning disability annual health checks and adult mental health inpatient rates for people with a learning disability and autistic people. Within annual reports, ICBs should explain how information has been used to guide action.

In addition, each ICB is required to have an executive lead on learning disability and autism and to consider and demonstrate how they will reduce the health inequalities faced by people with a learning disability and autistic people in their local populations within the five year strategic plans mandated as part of the Medium-Term Planning Framework, which is avaiable on the NHS.UK website in an online only format.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of the charges imposed by the authorities in Bahrain against opposition activist Mr Ebrahim Sharif.

Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)

I refer the Noble Lord to the answers provided to questions HL13124 on 12 January 2026 , HL8922 on 15 July 2025, and HL4957 on 25 February 2025.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of the UN Committee Against Torture’s concluding observations on Bahrain, issued on 28 November 2024 (CAT/C/BHR/CO/4), and in particular of the Committee’s call for the release of human rights defenders allegedly detained and imprisoned in retaliation for their work, including Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, Abduljalil al-Singace and Hassan Mushaima.

Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)

I refer the Noble Lord to the answers provided to questions HL13124 on 12 January 2026 , HL8922 on 15 July 2025, and HL4957 on 25 February 2025.

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made, if any, of reports concerning the conditions of detention of Mr Ebrahim Sharif at Dry Dock Detention Centre in Bahrain, including allegations of poor prison conditions.

Answered by Baroness Chapman of Darlington - Minister of State (Development)

I refer the Noble Lord to the answers provided to questions HL13124 on 12 January 2026 , HL8922 on 15 July 2025, and HL4957 on 25 February 2025.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they considered the findings of NHS England’s economic analysis which shows the community pharmacy sector is under-funded by over £2 billion per annum when deciding to clawback a further £16.8 million per quarter from community pharmacies through adjustments to drug tariff pricelists.

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

Funding for pharmaceutical services is through the Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework (CPCF) settlement. For 2025/26, this was increased to £3.073 billion, of which £900 million is the amount pharmacy contractors are allowed to retain as medicine margin, the difference between the reimbursement price and the purchase price paid by the pharmacy contractor.

The Department, along with Community Pharmacy England, the representative body of community pharmacies, assesses the medicines margin retained by community pharmacies in totality, through a ‘quarterly margin survey’. If too much medicine margin is being delivered, then downwards adjustments, or clawbacks, are made to bring this in line with the allowed medicine margin as agreed under the CPCF settlement.

The economic analysis is considered as part of the wider decision on the CPCF settlement, which was agreed with Community Pharmacy England, the representative body of community pharmacies. The medicine margin adjustment made each quarter, including the downward adjustment of £16.8 million per quarter made in January 2026, is operating within the agreed 2025/26 CPCF settlement.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 1 December 2025 (HL12313), where the results of the NHS Learning Disability Improvement Standard exercise are published; how people with learning disabilities and their families are involved in the exercise; and how the results are made accessible to people with learning disabilities and their families so they are able to compare performance amongst NHS Trusts.

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

The NHS Learning Disability Improvement Standards support National Health Service trusts to assess the quality of care provided for people with a learning disability and were designed with lived experience at the centre of the process. The standards and easy read information are available on the NHS England website.

To understand how well organisations are meeting the standards, the NHS Benchmarking Network undertakes an annual data collection exercise, with further information avaiable at the NHS Benchmarking Network website. All annual summary reports are published on the Learning Disability Improvement Standards Hub website. Each trust that participates in the exercise also receives their own bespoke report and are encouraged to share learning at the local level in suitable formats for the populations they serve.

Ahead of each annual benchmarking exercise, people with a learning disability and user-led organisations are engaged to design and revise the metrics which are asked of NHS organisations. This process recognises that people with lived experience are best placed to ask questions concerning the quality of services they expect and has recently been facilitated by Learning Disability England. Input is also sought from clinicians, managers, and senior leadership, ensuring greater transparency and accountability.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Merron on 23 December (HL11565), of the executive senior managers at NHS England who have left since 1 March 2025 and received payments in lieu of notice or annual leave, (1) how many have since been re-employed in any capacity—including as consultants or interim staff—by the NHS or an NHS body, arm’s-length body, or government department, (2) how many of these individuals have been required to repay all or part of their exit payments under current clawback provisions, and (3) what is the total value of the funds successfully recovered to date.

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

Of the 17 executive senior managers at NHS England who have left since 1 March 2025 and received a payment either in lieu of notice or in lieu of annual leave, six have since been re-employed in the National Health Service, an NHS body, an arm’s length body (ALB), or a Government department. We do not hold information related to consultancy.

One of these six individuals received a redundancy payment which is in the scope of the clawback provisions. Recovery has commenced for a partial recovery proportionate to their gap in NHS employment.

For the other five people securing re-employment in the NHS, an NHS body, an ALB, or a Government department, their payments in lieu related to annual leave or notice, and therefore were not within the scope of clawback arrangements.

Whilst recovery action has actively commenced for the individual in the scope of the claw back provisions, no funds have been recovered to date.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government what the total cost to the NHS was in each of the past five years for treating complications resulting from non-therapeutic male circumcision performed outside of NHS settings; what the total expenditure for procedures under OPCS-4 code S47.4 (reconstruction of prepuce) and S47.5 (other operations on prepuce) is where the primary diagnosis was not a congenital medical condition; and what assessment they have made of the cost offset required to treat emergency admissions for ICD-10 code T81.0 (haemorrhage and haematoma) when linked to a history of recent non-therapeutic surgical intervention.

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

The Department does not hold the data in this format.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government why they instructed a reduction of integrated care board staff by April 2026 without making additional up-front funding provision for redundancy payments.

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

Following the Prime Minister’s announcement of the abolition of NHS England, we have been clear on the need for a smaller centre, as well as scaling back integrated care board running costs and National Health Service provider corporate costs, in order to reduce waste and bureaucracy.

We have recently announced the Spending Review settlement which provides an additional £29 billion of annual day-to-day spending in real terms by 2028/29 compared to 2023/24. We are now carefully reviewing how the settlement is prioritised, including making provision for redundancy costs. In due course, the NHS will be asked to incorporate this into the multi-year planning round which has now been launched with the publication of the Medium-Term Planning Framework on 24 October 2025.