Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to bring forward legislative proposals to update regulations in the fertility industry.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) published Modernising Fertility Law in November 2023, which made a number of recommendations for legislative change, including around its regulatory powers. Ministers have met with the HFEA Chair and discussed the emerging regulatory challenges.
The Government is considering the HFEA’s priorities for changing the law and will decide how to take this forward at the earliest opportunity.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will ensure that NHS England's guidance entitled Play well – resources for health play services for England, published on 2 June 2025, is policy across the NHS.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play, as games and active play in all settings build social skills and support children’s well-being.
To ensure that children’s right to play is maintained and supported in healthcare settings, NHS England has worked with Starlight, a national charity for children’s play in healthcare, to publish the Play Well toolkit. This includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England.
To support implementation, NHS England encourages the use of these standards by managers of health play services across a wide range of healthcare environments accessed by children and young people, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. This will support the auditing, monitoring, and evaluation of services.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
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 ensure that children's right to play is (a) maintained and (b) supported in healthcare settings.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the importance of supporting and maintaining children’s right to play, as games and active play in all settings build social skills and support children’s well-being.
To ensure that children’s right to play is maintained and supported in healthcare settings, NHS England has worked with Starlight, a national charity for children’s play in healthcare, to publish the Play Well toolkit. This includes the first national guidelines and standards for commissioning and delivering health play services in England.
To support implementation, NHS England encourages the use of these standards by managers of health play services across a wide range of healthcare environments accessed by children and young people, including community clinics, emergency departments, children’s hospices, and acute paediatric wards. This will support the auditing, monitoring, and evaluation of services.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to make it his policy to ensure that integrated care boards recommend high-intensity focused ultrasound to people with localised prostate cancer outside London.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has developed interventional procedures guidance on high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) treatment for prostate cancer and focal therapy using HIFU for localised prostate cancer. This type of guidance considers if interventional procedures are safe and work well enough for wider use in the National Health Service, and both pieces of guidance acknowledge that there is a lack of evidence on quality-of-life benefits and long-term survival.
The NICE’s guidelines recommend that HIFU should not be offered to people with localised or locally advanced prostate cancer, other than in the context of controlled clinical trials comparing their use with established interventions.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
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 high-intensity focused ultrasound is available to patients in Hampshire.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first, including in Hampshire. This means making sure that patients, including those waiting to receive high-intensity focused ultrasound, are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.
We will transform diagnostic services and will support the National Health Service to increase diagnostic capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new capacity, including ultrasound scanners.
We have made progress in cutting NHS waiting lists and ensuring people have the best possible experience during their care. As of March 2025, the waiting list has reduced by over 219,000 pathways and since July 2024 we have delivered over three million more appointments, exceeding our pledge of two million.
As set out in the Plan for Change, we will ensure 92% of patients return to waiting no longer than 18 weeks from referral to treatment by March 2029, a standard which has not been met consistently since September 2015.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to review the length of time GPs take to process medical records for the armed forces.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are working across Government to increase efficiency in general practices (GPs) and the patient experience by removing red tape and streamlining, or removing, requests to GPs for medical evidence where possible, aiming to free up more GP time to care for patients. This includes improving and helping speed up processes through digital solutions for the sharing of medical records for recruitment to the armed forces, whilst work continues towards the introduction of a new Armed Forces Recruitment Service by 2027.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of consulting with suppliers of community care equipment and services to make an assessment of (a) levels of provision gaps and (b) their potential impact on community care patients.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 30 January 2025, NHS England published the guidance Standardising community health services, specifically codifying core services, which is available the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/standardising-community-health-services/
Community health services cover a diverse range of healthcare delivery, and the guidance supports improved commissioning and delivery of community healthcare services. Codifying community health services will help to better assess demand and capacity and will help commissioners make investment choices as they design neighbourhood health provision that shifts care to community based settings.
This publication is available for designing, commissioning, and delivering community health services, including neighbourhood health. Integrated care boards and their partners should consider the core components to support demand and capacity assessment and planning with providers, and should ensure the best use of funding to meet local needs and priorities.
Equipment such as wheelchair services, orthotics, and prosthetics for both adults and children and young people are core components of community health services and are refenced in the guidance.
Local National Health Service organisations have access to a wide range of procurement routes, but the Government has put in place a range of initiatives to help NHS bodies make informed choices about the products and the route through which they are bought. These include the NHS Supply Chain, a national body which is responsible for procuring and delivering the majority of consumables, equipment, and other supplies into the NHS. The NHS Supply Chain was set up to leverage the collective buying power of the NHS, to drive savings and provide a standardised range of clinically assured quality products at the best value.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on changes to employer National Insurance Contributions and the potential impact on (a) community care services and (b) wider healthcare services.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has discussed the impact of employer National Insurance contributions with HM Treasury, and has been informed of the Department’s allocation.
The Government’s intent is to publish the allocations alongside departmental budgets for 2025/26 at the Mains estimates. This will be published as a supplementary table, with a brief description of the methodology used accompanying it, and the table will not list a breakdown of the specific compensation to individual services.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the Care Quality Commission on minimising the risk of future backlogs emerging for (a) inspections and (b) reinspections of healthcare providers.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Departmental officials meet fortnightly with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to discuss measures CQC have put in place to address among other issues, delays in the production of inspection reports and initial inspection and reinspection.
As part of this process, the CQC provides fortnightly updates to senior Departmental officials on the work it is doing to improve and ensure it has robust systems in place to support the changes it is making to deliver its assessment activity of the providers it regulates. This increased reporting to, and oversight from, the Department also allows the level of risk across the CQC’s delivery to be monitored at a senior level.
Delays to the CQC’s inspection activities are partially due to failures of its IT systems. The CQC has accepted recommendations of the independent review into the CQC’s technology which was published in March 2025 and is available at the following link:
https://www.cqc.org.uk/news/independent-review-cqc-technology-published
The CQC is currently working to review options for alternative methods of inspection report publication while work is carried out to make necessary changes to its IT systems.
The introduction of a ‘hybrid’ approach which launched on 2 December 2024 aims to streamline the existing process by discontinuing scoring at the evidence category level and instead reporting at the quality statement level. This change is intended to improve efficiency for CQC staff. In addition, efforts are underway to address the backlog of ‘stuck’ assessments within the system. As of 24 April 2025, the current number of ‘stuck’ assessments is 52, a reduction of 448.
Work continues to further lower this number and to strengthen the monitoring and management of assessment delays.
Asked by: Caroline Dinenage (Conservative - Gosport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the Care Quality Commission on reducing the delay in the production of reports for healthcare providers following (a) their initial inspection and (b) reinspections.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Departmental officials meet fortnightly with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to discuss measures CQC have put in place to address among other issues, delays in the production of inspection reports and initial inspection and reinspection.
As part of this process, the CQC provides fortnightly updates to senior Departmental officials on the work it is doing to improve and ensure it has robust systems in place to support the changes it is making to deliver its assessment activity of the providers it regulates. This increased reporting to, and oversight from, the Department also allows the level of risk across the CQC’s delivery to be monitored at a senior level.
Delays to the CQC’s inspection activities are partially due to failures of its IT systems. The CQC has accepted recommendations of the independent review into the CQC’s technology which was published in March 2025 and is available at the following link:
https://www.cqc.org.uk/news/independent-review-cqc-technology-published
The CQC is currently working to review options for alternative methods of inspection report publication while work is carried out to make necessary changes to its IT systems.
The introduction of a ‘hybrid’ approach which launched on 2 December 2024 aims to streamline the existing process by discontinuing scoring at the evidence category level and instead reporting at the quality statement level. This change is intended to improve efficiency for CQC staff. In addition, efforts are underway to address the backlog of ‘stuck’ assessments within the system. As of 24 April 2025, the current number of ‘stuck’ assessments is 52, a reduction of 448.
Work continues to further lower this number and to strengthen the monitoring and management of assessment delays.