Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to increase the number of kidney transplants, including through increasing organ donation rates, improving family consent, supporting living donation, and maximising the use of donated kidneys.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is the organisation responsible for organ donation services in the United Kingdom.
NHSBT, working with the Department and NHS England, delivers a multi‑channel programme of activity to increase organ donation, improve family consent, and maximise the impact of both deceased and living donation. This includes:
year-round communications and engagement, combining national campaigns, digital marketing, and partnership working. High-profile moments, such as Organ Donation Week, Living Donation Week, and World Kidney Day, are supported by media activity across a variety of channels, directing audiences to trusted information and to register their wishes on the NHS Organ Donor Register;
partnerships, including with National Health Service organisations, charities, community, and advocacy groups, which aim to reach people at key moments through trusted channels. For example, a functionality has been introduced recently on the front page of the NHS App, making it easier for people to record, review, and share their organ donation decision as part of routine interactions with NHS services;
targeted community engagement, supported by NHSBT’s Community Grants Programme, helps improve understanding of organ donation and family consent in communities with greater transplant need or lower consent rates; and
work to maximise the use of donated kidneys, including new assessment and recovery centres, which are currently being piloted and will use machine perfusion technology to preserve and assess kidneys for longer, alongside trust utilisation strategies to help transplant centres and hospitals identify and address local barriers to using suitable organs.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to address practical barriers to home dialysis, including through patient education and choice, assisted peritoneal dialysis, community nursing support, reimbursement of utility costs, addressing storage and housing constraints, and transport incentives that may favour in-centre dialysis.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The updated service specification will be published in due course. It will support ongoing action to increase home dialysis provision in line with the Renal Services Transformation Programme ambition for at least 20% of patients to be treated at home, including through strengthened early patient education, standardised pre-dialysis pathways, and multidisciplinary care models that enable shared decision-making.
The specification will include defined metrics for commissioned providers, including the proportion of dialysis patients receiving home-based therapies, supporting formal assessment against the ambition of achieving at least 20% uptake.
This is complemented by improvements to operational processes, including home assessments and installation pathways, to ensure patients can access home therapies in a timely and consistent way.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government how NHS England's target for 20 per cent of dialysis patients to receive treatment at home will be implemented, monitored and encouraged through the updated renal service specification; and what mechanisms will be used to support integrated care boards, renal networks and providers to increase home dialysis uptake.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The updated service specification will be published in due course. It will support ongoing action to increase home dialysis provision in line with the Renal Services Transformation Programme ambition for at least 20% of patients to be treated at home, including through strengthened early patient education, standardised pre-dialysis pathways, and multidisciplinary care models that enable shared decision-making.
The specification will include defined metrics for commissioned providers, including the proportion of dialysis patients receiving home-based therapies, supporting formal assessment against the ambition of achieving at least 20% uptake.
This is complemented by improvements to operational processes, including home assessments and installation pathways, to ensure patients can access home therapies in a timely and consistent way.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what progress they have made towards increasing the proportion of kidney dialysis patients able to receive treatment at home, including through implementation of the NHS "three shifts" agenda from hospital to community care.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The latest UK Renal Registry report in 2025 shows that the uptake of home dialysis has increased, with continued progress in expanding home therapies, which account for around 15–20% of dialysis patients. A copy of the report is attached.
NHS England, renal networks, providers and patient organisations are working together to continue to increase access to home-based therapies.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when NHS England plans to publish the updated renal service specification; and what steps they are taking to ensure the specification supports increased access to home dialysis therapies and improved patient choice.
Answered by Baroness Merron - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The specification is being worked on by NHS England in line with its national service specification methods process. Stakeholder testing was recently undertaken. The timing of full publication has yet to be decided upon as the feedback from stakeholders is being considered, alongside any changes required. NHS England will set out the expected date of publication as soon as this is available.
NHS England is increasing access to home-based therapies through the Renal Services Transformation Toolkit (2023), which aims for at least 20% of patients to be treated at home. The specification will support the 20% ambition.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many GPs retired in (1) 2019, (2) 2020, and (3) 2021.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the number of general practitioners who have retired from the NHS Pension Scheme in each year since 2019.
Scheme Year End | Number of retirements |
2019 | 1,144 |
2020 | 1,193 |
2021 | 1,331 |
Source: NHS Business Authority
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when they expect to answer the Written Questions tabled by Lord Watts on 17 November (HL4171, HL4172 and HL4173).
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
We responded to the noble Lord’s questions on 16 December and 29 December respectively.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Kamall on 16 November (HL Deb, cols. 158–160), how many doctors were employed by the NHS in (1) 2019, and (2) 2021.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
In August 2019, there were 115,469 full time equivalent (FTE) Hospital and Community Health Service (HCHS) doctors working in National Health Service trusts and clinical commissioning groups in England and 126,625 in August 2021. There were 34,433 FTE doctors in general practice in England as at 30 September 2019 and 36,275 in September 2021.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Kamall on 16 November (HL Deb, cols. 158-160), what assessment they have made of the number of NHS doctors who are likely to retire between 2021 and 2024.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
An assessment of future expected retirement rates for National Health Service doctors is complex. Retirement is a personal choice and an individual may choose to retire for a range of reasons. While it is not possible to isolate a single factor which motivates retirement, we continue to monitor retirement patterns of doctors in the NHS.
Asked by: Lord Watts (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the reply by Lord Kamall on 16 November (HL Deb, cols. 158–160), whether they expect to meet their target to increase the number of GPs by 6000 by 2024.
Answered by Lord Kamall - Shadow Minister (Health and Social Care)
While progress against the target to increase the number of doctors in general practice by 6,000 by 2024 has been challenging, we remain committed to increasing the general practitioner (GP) workforce as soon as possible. In September 2021, there were 1,841 more full time equivalent doctors in general practice than September 2019 - a headcount increase of 2,634.
We are working with NHS England and NHS Improvement, Health Education England and the profession to increase recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession and encourage them to return to practice. We have increased the number of GP training places with 4,000 doctors accepting a place this year, from 2,671 in 2014.