Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to his speech to the 2024 Country Land and Business Association conference of 21 November 2024, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending the proposed 25-year farming roadmap to include (a) food and (b) food consumption.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
At the Country Land and Business Association conference, Defra communicated that we would work together with farmers on a 25-year roadmap. This means we will not be telling farmers what to do. The 25-year farming roadmap will be co-produced to transition to new models that are more environmentally, and more financially, sustainable for the long-term.
Defra will focus on making farming and food production more profitable and sustainable for decades to come.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, by what procedure central government funding is allocated to institutions providing hospice care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. This promotes a more consistent national approach and supports commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.
Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding each charitable hospice receives varies both within and between ICB areas. This will vary depending on the demand in that ICB area, but will also be dependent on the totality and type of palliative and end of life care provision from both NHS and non-NHS services, including charitable hospices, within each ICB area.
From 2007/8 until 2023/24, children and young people’s hospices received funding via the Children’s Hospice Grant. While 2023/24 marked the final year of the Children’s Hospice Grant in its previous format, in 2024/25, NHS England provided £25 million of funding for children and young people’s hospices, maintaining the level of funding from 2023/24. For the first time, this funding was distributed to hospices by ICBs, on behalf of NHS England, rather than being centrally administered as before. Since 2022/23, individual allocations of this funding have been determined using a prevalence-based model, enabling allocations to reflect local population need.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to increase the amount of health-related content in the national curriculum.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
Health education has been compulsory in all state-funded schools in England since 2020, as part of statutory relationships, sex and health education (RSHE).
The RSHE curriculum, which is currently being reviewed, includes a wide range of health-related topics, including healthy eating, physical fitness, mental wellbeing and first aid, as well as the risks of smoking, drugs and alcohol.
Separately, the independent Curriculum and Assessment Review will consider how RSHE fits into the wider curriculum.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will make it his policy to support (a) low and (b) middle income countries issuing compulsory licenses for the HIV prevention tool lenacapavir.
Answered by Anneliese Dodds - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Lenacapavir could play a critical role in the global fight against HIV but only when it is available and affordable in countries that need it. We strongly supported Unitaid's decision to invest £17 million to accelerate access to Lenacapavir through market-shaping grants.
As Lord Collins stated in Parliament on 18 November at the HIV APPG roundtable, we welcome Gilead's bilateral voluntary licensing agreements with six generic manufacturers to make and sell generic Lenacapavir in 120 resource-limited countries, and their commitment to provide Lenacapavir at non-profit pricing in sub-Saharan Africa.
In combination with our market-shaping interventions, this will help accelerate access to this potentially groundbreaking tool.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, if he will prioritise global health spending in the Overseas Development Assistance budget in (a) 2024-25 and (b) 2025-26.
Answered by Anneliese Dodds - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
The UK is a leader on global health and one of the largest providers of Official Development Assistance (ODA) for health, including to organisations like Gavi, helping to vaccinate one billion children through the Global Fund, which has cut the global death rate from HIV, malaria and TB by 50 per cent, and as the largest flexible funder of the World Health Organization.
In 2024/25, we are prioritising predictability and stability after years of turbulence under the previous Government. We will publish the FCDO's ODA programme allocations for 2024/25 shortly. We are considering how to allocate our ODA programme budget for 2025/26 to lay the foundations for our ODA spending in future years; the allocations will be published in due course.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
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 monitor the rise in cases in the more spreadable variant of mpox now detected in the UK.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are two distinct types of the mpox virus: clade I and clade II. The previous significant outbreak in the United Kingdom in 2022 was from clade II. Clade I is currently classified as a high consequence infectious disease. The risk to the UK population remains low. We expect to see the occasional imported case of Clade Ib mpox in the UK.
The UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) continues to closely monitor mpox epidemiology and has well established surveillance systems to monitor the spread of mpox. This is supported by a robust contact tracing process that helps us to effectively contain any imported cases found in the UK.
The latest information about UK cases of mpox is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/ukhsa-detects-first-case-of-clade-ib-mpox
A full summary of the measures UKHSA is taking is summarised in the technical briefing, which is available at the following link:
This briefing will be reviewed and updated as more is understood about the disease.
UKHSA is engaged with international partners, including the World Health Organisation, European, US and Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, ensuring we receive updates about international cases in a timely fashion.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to paragraph 2.71 of the Autumn Budget 2024, published on 30 October, what support his Department plans to give to GP practices unable to access the fund for GP surgery upgrades.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There is no additional national funding for those not prioritised by their local systems to access the capital fund of £102m for GP upgrades allocated in the 2024 Autumn Budget.
This capital fund is in addition to annual capital allocations to Integrated Care Boards (ICBs). Since 2022/23, the Department includes a substantial proportion of primary care business as usual estates and GP IT capital in ICB capital funding envelopes. This allows ICBs to take a more cohesive approach to capital investment decisions across all organisations within that system. In addition, ICBs are responsible for commissioning - planning, securing, and monitoring – GP services within their health systems through delegated responsibility from NHS England.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to increase the number of medical speciality training places (a) in total and (b) in anaesthesia.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS staff have been overworked for years, with staff being burnt out and demoralised.
We are committed to training the staff we need, including anaesthetists, to ensure patients are cared for by the right professional, when and where they need it.
We will ensure that the number of medical specialty training places meets the demands of the NHS in the future. NHS England will work with stakeholders to ensure that any growth is sustainable and focused in the service areas where need is greatest.
There is no quick fix, but through the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan we will build a health service fit for the future.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
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 help increase the number of anaesthetists.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS staff have been overworked for years, with staff being burnt out and demoralised.
We are committed to training the staff we need, including anaesthetists, to ensure patients are cared for by the right professional, when and where they need it.
We will ensure that the number of medical specialty training places meets the demands of the NHS in the future. NHS England will work with stakeholders to ensure that any growth is sustainable and focused in the service areas where need is greatest.
There is no quick fix, but through the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan we will build a health service fit for the future.
Asked by: Beccy Cooper (Labour - Worthing West)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of anaesthetic workforce shortages on the NHS’s ability to tackle the elective backlog.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Tackling waiting lists is a key part of our Health Mission. We have committed to getting back to the NHS Constitutional standard that at least 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment within our first term. As a first step to achieving this, we will deliver 2 million additional appointments, scans, and operations, or the equivalent to 40,000 per week.
Whilst no formal assessment has been made of the specific potential impact of anaesthetic workforce shortages on the National Health Service’s ability to tackle the backlog, the Government will ensure the NHS has the right people, in the right places, with the right skills, to deliver the care patients need.