Asked by: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress she has made on increasing levels of GP recruitment and retention.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
Firstly, I would like to express my gratitude for the fantastic work of general practice. We are committed to increasing the number of doctors in general practice and I can tell my honourable friend that there were nearly 2,800 more full-time equivalent doctors in general practice in December 2023 compared to December 2019, and that in 2022 we saw a record 4,032 trainees accept a place on GP training, up from 2,671 in 2014. Finally, training places will rise to 6,000 by 2031/32, with the first 500 new places available from September 2025.
Asked by: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that funding allocated to tackling mental illness is spent on that issue.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health Dashboard reports detail on the expenditure made by National Health Service clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) on mental health services. It is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/taskforce/imp/mh-dashboard
CCGs are required each year, under the Mental Health Investment Standard (MHIS), to increase their spend on mental health services by a greater amount than the growth in their overall programme allocation. The requirement to meet the MHIS is included within the NHS Operational Planning and Contracting Guidance 2017–2019 and is a key part of NHS England’s operational and financial planning assurance process for 2018/19.
Asked by: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what policies he plans to bring forward to enable more hospitals to meet the targets on waiting times for (a) A&E treatment, (b) cancer treatment and (c) planned operations and care.
Answered by Steve Barclay
The Government’s Mandate to NHS England for 2018-19 is clear that it is to maintain and improve performance against core patient access standards including accident and emergency (A&E), cancer and planned operations and care-Referral to Treatment (RTT).
The Government expects the National Health Service to deliver the actions set out in the NHS Planning Guidance for 2018-19 – in full – as key steps towards fully recovering performance against core access standards. This means treating a quarter of a million more patients in A&E, halving the number who have the longest waits for treatment and working towards reducing the number of patients waiting overall. We gave the NHS top priority in the 2017 budget with an additional £2.8 billion of funding for the NHS between 2017-18 and 2019-20, and this has been reflected in the mandate.
To provide the NHS with financial stability, the longer-term plan, announced last month will see NHS funding increase by £20.5 billion per year by 2023/24, the end of the first five years compared with today.
Asked by: Andrew Jones (Conservative - Harrogate and Knaresborough)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many nurses were employed in Harrogate District and North Yorkshire in (a) 2013-2014, (b) 2014-2015 and (c) 2016-2017.
Answered by Steve Barclay
NHS Digital publishes workforce statistics and the following table shows the number of Full Time Equivalent (FTE) Hospital and Community Health Service nurses and health visitors in Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, which is the main service provider for north Yorkshire, each year from 2013 to 2017.
NHS Hospital and Community Health Services (HCHS): Nurses and health visitors as at 31 October each specified year (FTE).
FTE | October 2013 | October 2014 | October 2015 | October 2016 | October 2017 |
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust | 766 | 830 | 789 | 1,092 | 1,081 |
Source: NHS Digital HCHS workforce statistics