Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the 10 Year Health Plan, how many GPs per neighbourhood will there be under the Neighbourhood Health Service.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practices (GPs) will be the cornerstone of the Neighbourhood Health Service. We anticipate that GPs will play a key role in providing clinical leadership for integrated neighbourhood teams.
We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that reflects the specific needs of local populations. While the focus on personalised, coordinated care will be consistent, that will mean the service will look different in rural communities, coastal towns, and deprived inner cities.
We will train thousands more GPs in the coming years, and through the course of the 10-Year Health Plan we will increase the proportion of staff we train for community and primary care roles.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, whether his Department withholds state pension payments to people convicted of illegal working.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
Anyone convicted of a criminal offence and serving a custodial sentence in the UK is not eligible to receive State Pension payments during their imprisonment.
People not in prison but convicted of illegal working, would not be making National Insurance contributions during any period of illegal working, which would be required to build entitlement for the State Pension.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:
To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, if he will ask the Office for National Statistics to produce deprivation statistics at output area level.
Answered by Miatta Fahnbulleh - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government)
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government announced recently that the English Indices of Deprivation 2025 will be published on Thursday 30th October 2025. This has been confirmed on GOV.UK
As part of this, the Department is working to enhance and update its measures of deprivation in line with recommendations from its 2022 user consultation - Indices Futures: Updating the English Indices of Deprivation (IoD) - consultation - GOV.UK. This includes assessing the feasibility and provision of data at Output Area (OA) level.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the causes of the resident doctor strikes in 2025.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 9 April, The British Medical Association resident doctors committee (BMA RDC) entered into dispute in relation to the timing of the Review Body on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration report and subsequently ran a statutory ballot, which closed on 8 July, in response to the report and the 2025/26 pay award. They have since run another statutory ballot exclusively for their foundation year 1 members in relation to lack of training places.
Following these ballots the BMA RDC currently holds two live mandates for strike action. One is in relation to pay, which applies to all the resident doctor membership, and one is in relation to pay and training places, which applies to their foundation year 1 membership only.
They took five days of strike action from 25 to 30 July under their mandate over pay.
My Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has regular engagement with resident doctors and is aware of the issues that they are experiencing as they work and train in the National Health Service. My Rt. Hon. Friend intends to continue to work with the BMA RDC to resolve their disputes and improve working conditions. This Government has already made significant improvements on the issues which impact doctors most through NHS England’s 10 Point Plan to improve resident doctors’ working lives.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the cost of non-healthcare professionals in his plans for the NHS; and how this compares to the current figure.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No specific assessment has been made of the future cost of non-healthcare professionals. The NHS England 2025/26 Priorities and Operational Planning Guidance though states that integrated care boards and providers should review their workforce and spending to identify savings, including on non-frontline staff, in order to prioritise frontline care. The guidance requires systems to conduct a robust review of establishment growth and return spend on support functions to April 2022 levels. The guidance is available at the following link:
The Department estimates that expenditure on total paybill for substantive staff employed in National Health Service infrastructure support roles was around £14.4 billion in the 2024-25 financial year. For context, the total paybill for NHS staff in 2024-25 was around £86.6 billion, meaning infrastructure support staff account for around 17% of the total paybill which has been essentially unchanged since 2010-11.
NHS infrastructure support roles includes staff working in central functions such as human resources and finance, staff working in property and estates roles and also NHS managers. This paybill figure includes the cost of basic pay, additional earnings, employer national insurance contributions and employer pensions contributions. It covers staff employed by NHS trusts, integrated care boards and also central NHS bodies and support organisations.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 7 of the NHS 10 Year Plan, if he will set out the circumstances in which integrated care board boundaries will differ from those of mayoralty authorities.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It remains the Government’s ambition for integrated care boards (ICBs) to be coterminous with one or more strategic authorities wherever feasible, a commitment made in the English devolution white paper and reaffirmed in our 10-Year Health Plan.
Next summer, as local government reform progresses, the Department of Health and Social Care will work closely with NHS England and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to decide any further ICB mergers and boundary changes.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's press release entitled £75 million boost for hospices to transform end-of-life care, published on 20 July 2025, whether he has made an assessment of the revenue implications for hospices of this investment.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Hospices do incredible work by supporting people and families when they need it most, and we recognise the incredibly tough pressures they are facing.
Palliative care services are included in the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission. ICBs are responsible for the commissioning of palliative and end of life care services, to meet the needs of their local populations.
Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding from their respective ICBs for providing National Health Services.
The £75 million capital funding boost for hospices was intended to help them to provide the best end of life care to patients and their families in a supportive and dignified physical environment by, for example, funding refurbishments, overhauling IT systems, and improving facilities for patients and visitors. The impact this may have had on revenue has not been assessed.
Additionally, we are providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. This is a continuation of the funding which, until recently, as known as the Children’s Hospice Grant.
I can also now confirm the continuation of this vital funding for the three years of the next spending review period, 2026/27 to 2028/29 inclusive. This funding will see circa £26 million, adjusted for inflation, allocated to children and young people’s hospices in England each year, via their local ICBs on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024/25 and 2025/26. This amounts to approximately £80 million over the next three years.
Asked by: Blake Stephenson (Conservative - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether her Department's definition of a millionaire includes (a) assets, (b) the outstanding value of pension pots and (c) income levels in the context of (i) winter fuel payments and (ii) other policies.
Answered by Torsten Bell - Parliamentary Secretary (HM Treasury)
The Winter Fuel Payment will be paid to those with total incomes below or equal to £35,000. This means those on lower and middle incomes will still receive the help they need and ensures fairness for both pensioners and taxpayers.
The standard definition of total taxable income applies. This includes any savings interest outside an ISA, even if the savings are under the Personal Savings Allowance
Other benefits have their own means tests, which take differing personal and financial circumstances into account to ensure support is appropriately targeted.