Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of people who were diagnosed with diabetes in Aldershot constituency in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the number of people that were newly diagnosed with diabetes in the Aldershot constituency, in each of the calendar years from 2018 to 2022, broken down by diabetes type:
Year of diagnosis | Number of people newly diagnosed with diabetes | ||
Type 1 | Type 2 and other | All diabetes types | |
2018 | 15 | 540 | 555 |
2019 | 15 | 590 | 605 |
2020 | 10 | 405 | 415 |
2021 | 15 | 450 | 465 |
2022 | 5 | 505 | 510 |
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of mental health specialists in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
To fix the chronic workforce shortages in the mental health workforce we plan to recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers across child and adult mental health services, to reduce waiting times and provide faster treatment, across all areas of England, including the Aldershot constituency.
We are working to develop a plan to deliver this expansion of the mental health workforce, including where they should be deployed to achieve maximum effect. NHS England is also working to improve retention through clearer career progression pathways.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of midwives in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government will make sure the National Health Service has the staff it needs, to be there for all of us when we need it, and will get the staff to the places where patients and the NHS need them. This will not only benefit the Aldershot constituency, but the whole of the NHS in England.
Recruitment decisions do not sit with the Government but instead are the responsibility of the local employers, who are best placed to understand the diverse needs of their communities. They subsequently manage their own recruitment to ensure they have the right number of staff, with the right skill mix, to provide the safe and effective care that their patients need. Each trust has a retention midwife who focuses on retention and providing pastoral support to midwives as they consider their future options in and outside of the NHS.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to support the (a) recruitment and (b) retention of GPs in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have committed to training thousands more general practitioners (GPs) across the country, as well as taking pressure off those currently working in the system. The inclusion of newly qualified GPs into the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme will also support the recruitment of GPs.
The NHS Frimley Integrated Care Board, which includes Aldershot, advises it is committed to supporting, developing, and retaining its workforce, and that it offers a full and varied training and development offer to clinical staff. This includes the national New GP Fellowship programme, which currently has 40 newly qualified GPs across the Frimley system, two of whom are from Aldershot. The scheme helps the transition into GP, post qualification. Other initiatives include mentoring and national Continuing Professional Development funding for primary care staff.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to enable GP surgeries to provide additional services in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practices are able to provide Directed Enhanced Services and Enhanced Services by opting in, and will receive payment for these services separately to global sum payments. As commissioners of primary care, integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning Local Enhanced Services, which are not agreed nationally and can vary in scope and funding to fit local needs.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average payments to community pharmacies were in Aldershot constituency in (a) 2021-22 and (b) 2022-23.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The average payments by the NHS Business Services Authority to community pharmacies in the Aldershot constituency were: £68,547.19 per pharmacy per month in 2021/22, or £822,566.32 per pharmacy for 12 months; and £77,398.58 per pharmacy per month in 2022/23, or £928,782.96 per pharmacy for 12 months.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of social care capacity in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Local authorities are best placed to understand and plan for the needs of their population, which is why under the Care Act 2014, local authorities are tasked with the duty to shape their care market to meet the diverse needs of all local people. In performing that duty, a local authority must have regard to the need to ensure that it is aware of current and likely future demand for such services, and to consider how providers might meet that demand.
The Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund includes grant conditions which require each local authority to submit an adult social care capacity plan. These were submitted to the Department in June 2024. The hon. Member's local authority, Aldershot, submitted their 2024/25 capacity plan, which is currently undergoing processing and quality assurance.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to provide (a) resources and (b) other support to help GP surgeries to reduce (i) patient backlogs and (ii) workloads in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We know that patients are finding it harder than ever to see a general practitioner (GP), and we are committed to fixing this crisis in GPs to secure the long-term sustainability of the National Health Service. Aldershot sits within the NHS Frimley Integrated Care Board, where 84.8% of appointments were delivered within two weeks of booking, 2.1% higher than the national average.
The Government has committed to fixing the front door to the NHS by shifting the focus from hospitals and into the community. We know that if patients can’t get a GP appointment, they will end up in accident and emergency, which is worse for them, and more expensive for the taxpayer.
NHS England is working to address training bottlenecks, so the health service has enough staff for the future, and we have provided £82 million to fund the recruitment of over 1,000 newly qualified GPs, to increase capacity and reduce workloads.
We are pleased to announce that newly qualified GPs will be included in the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme as part of an initiative to address GP unemployment, with additional funding over 2024/25.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase access to mental health services in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
People with mental health issues in Aldershot and across the country are not getting the support or care they deserve, which is why we will fix the broken system to ensure that mental health is given the same attention and focus as physical health, so that people can be confident in accessing high quality mental health support when they need it.
We will recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers to reduce delays and provide faster treatment which will also help ease pressure on hospitals. By cutting mental health waiting lists and intervening earlier with more timely mental health support, we can get this country back to good health.
Asked by: Alex Baker (Labour - Aldershot)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to provide support to young people with eating disorders in Aldershot constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to working closely with NHS England to ensure that people with an eating disorder get the care and treatment they need, when they need it. The Department will focus on improving the performance of the existing waiting time standards for Children and Young Peoples’ Eating Disorder services including in Aldershot.
This will be supported by recruiting 8,500 additional mental health staff across children and adult mental health services, ensuring every young person has access to a specialist mental health professional at school, and setting up Young Futures hubs in every community, offering open access mental health services for young people.