Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
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 (a) increase funding and support for research into rare diseases and (b) improve early diagnosis pathways for patients.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to improving the lives of those living with rare diseases through the UK Rare Diseases Framework. Pioneering research is an underpinning theme of the framework. In the 2025 England Rare Diseases Action Plan we introduced a new action to support rare disease research through changes to clinical trial regulations. We have also made significant investments to support rare disease research. This includes the Rare Disease Research UK Platform, a £14 million investment over five years from the Medical Research Council and the National Institute for Health and Care Research, announced in 2023, which is now established and positioned well within the rare disease research landscape. Further information on the Rare Disease Research UK Platform is available at the following link:
https://rd-research.org.uk/platform/
The first priority of the framework is to help patients get a final diagnosis faster. The 2025 England Rare Diseases Action Plan updates on progress, including: research we have commissioned to better understand what causes delays in diagnosis; the Generation Study, to pilot whole genome sequencing of newborns in the National Health Service; and the work of the NHS Genomic Medicine Service.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on delivering the UK five-year action plan for antimicrobial resistance 2024 to 2029.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Following publication of the 2024 to 2029 UK AMR National Action Plan in May 2024, the Department is preparing the first annual report, summarising the progress made to date.
The organisations responsible for delivery provide regular updates to the Department, and the appropriate governance structures ensure that delivery is kept on track and that progress is being made on the national action plan’s commitments and targets, alongside managing programme risks.
The Department has also commissioned an evaluation of the 2024 to 2029 UK AMR National Action Plan, which will assess the implementation of antimicrobial resistance policy, provide evidence on the effectiveness of the national action plan, and inform future antimicrobial resistance policy development and implementation.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to tackle the sale of (a) illegal and (b) unregulated vaping products to children and young people.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill will strengthen enforcement and crack down on rogue retailers selling illegal and unregulated vape products to children and young people. The bill introduces new £200 fixed penalty notices in England and Wales for certain tobacco and vape offences, including underage sales, enables the introduction of a retail licensing scheme in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and enables the introduction of a new registration scheme for tobacco, vape, and nicotine products sold in the United Kingdom’s market.
The Government is investing £10 million of new funding in 2025/26 into Trading Standards, to support the enforcement of illicit and underage tobacco and vape sales in England, and to support the implementation of the measures in the bill. This funding is being used to boost the Trading Standards workforce by recruiting approximately 80 new apprentices. The new funding will also support the storage and recycling of seized illicit vapes, the additional work to identify and seize illicit vape consignments at ports, and the training of Trading Standards officers on the new single use vapes ban.
The devolved administrations will need to fund the delivery of the devolved measures in the bill for their nations. The Barnett formula will apply in the usual way, and it is for the devolved administrations to allocate their funding in devolved areas as they see fit.
The introduction of a new Vaping Products Duty in October 2026 will provide civil and criminal powers to HM Revenue and Customs, in order to assess for duty and seize products and equipment used to produce or transport illicit vape products.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
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 improve access to specialist mental health support for disabled children who are (a) victims of and (b) witnesses to serious crime.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Many children and young people (CYP) face complex emotional and mental health challenges arising from trauma.
Over the next decade, to deliver the Government’s missions, the National Health Service will play a key part in addressing the needs of these children, and the NHS planning guidance for 2025/26 is clear that integrated care boards should reduce local inequalities in access to CYP mental health services, between disadvantaged groups and the wider CYP population.
We will deliver on our commitment to get every child who needs it, including disabled children who are victims of and witnesses to serious crime, access to mental health support in school, and over the course of this year we will roll that support out to nearly a million extra children. Under Government plans, all pupils will have access to mental health support in school by 2029/30.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress he has made on the suicide prevention strategy; and what steps he is taking to help reduce suicide rates.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There has been significant work and progress across the Government, the National Health Service, the police, the voluntary sector, academia, and wider partners to deliver the strategy.
As part of our mission to build an NHS that is fit for the future and that is there when people need it, the Government will recruit 8,500 mental health workers specially trained to support people at risk of suicide, to help ease pressure on busy mental health services.
The Government also continues to fund the Multicentre Study of Self-harm, whose work is vital in informing the development of policy, and of clinical practice.
The Online Safety Act puts new duties on social media companies and search services to help protect children and adults from harmful content online.
Between August 2023 and March 2025, £10 million was made available to voluntary, community, and social enterprises in England through the national 2023 to 2025 Suicide Prevention Grant Fund. The Department is now evaluating the impact of the fund, and learning from the evaluation will help to inform the delivery of the Government’s mission to reduce the lives lost to suicide.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
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 implications for his policies of the Supreme Court judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) [2025] UKSC 16.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Single-sex spaces are protected in law and will always be protected by the Government. The recent Supreme Court ruling in the For Women Scotland case has provided much needed confidence and clarity for the National Health Service and adult social care providers to adapt their policies to ensure that same-sex spaces are always protected. This includes NHS England’s review of the Delivering same-sex accommodation guidance, as well as providers’ policies on same-sex spaces for staff.
This is the law, and we expect all public service bodies to comply.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average cost per patient for palliative care was in each of the last five years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Palliative care services are included on the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) in England must commission. It is difficult to quantify the total provision of, or spend on, palliative and end of life care at either a national or local ICB level because it is delivered every day by a wide range of specialist and generalist health and care workers providing care for a wide range of needs that include, but are not always exclusive to, palliative care.
That care is provided across multiple settings, including in primary care, community care, in hospitals, in hospices, in care homes, and in people’s own homes. Therefore, not all palliative and end of life care will be recorded or coded as such.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the cost to the public purse was of NHS spending on cancer (a) research and (b) treatment in each of the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information is not available in the requested format for cancer care in England. The Department allocated £14 billion to NHS England from 2022/23 to 2024/25 specifically for the National Health Service in England to recover elective and cancer care. This comprised of £8 billion of resource funding and £5.9 billion of capital funding, as described in the November 2021 Budget and Spending Review. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s next budget, on 30 October 2024, will finalise the funding position in 2024/25 and 2025/26.
Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the NHS in England, and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. The report will inform the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS in England, including further detail on how we will improve outcomes for cancer.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the total cost to the public purse was of cancer care in each of the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information is not available in the requested format for cancer care in England. The Department allocated £14 billion to NHS England from 2022/23 to 2024/25 specifically for the National Health Service in England to recover elective and cancer care. This comprised of £8 billion of resource funding and £5.9 billion of capital funding, as described in the November 2021 Budget and Spending Review. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s next budget, on 30 October 2024, will finalise the funding position in 2024/25 and 2025/26.
Lord Darzi’s report has set out the scale of the challenges we face in fixing the NHS in England, and the need to improve cancer waiting time performance and cancer survival. The report will inform the Government’s 10-Year Health Plan to reform the NHS in England, including further detail on how we will improve outcomes for cancer.
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had recent discussions with the Department of Health in Northern Ireland on the implementation of baby loss certificates similar to those in England.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Eligibility for the Baby Loss Certificate service is being continually assessed. Although health is a devolved matter, my officials have been in regular contact with their counterparts in the Department of Health in Northern Ireland, to discuss implementation of Baby Loss Certificates in Northern Ireland.