Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the oral contribution of the Prime Minister of 8 May 2024 in response to a question from the hon. Member for Weston Super Mare, which the 500 dental practices referred to are; and how many of those practices were registering NHS patients on 8 May 2024.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Our Dentistry Recovery Plan, backed by £200 million, will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for National Health Service dental patients. It will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. A New Patient Premium is supporting dentists to take on new patients and as of 8 April 2024, nearly 500 more practices have said they are open to new patients, compared to the end of January 2024. The Find a Dentist website allows people to see which practices have said they are accepting new patients, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.nhs.uk/service-search/find-a-dentist
No estimates are currently available on the number of new patients seen by dental practices since the New Patient Premium scheme was introduced, but we are committed to evaluating the impacts of the measures included in our plan, and we will publish monthly data on progress once this is available.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding the (a) National Institute for Health and Care Research and (b) UK Research Institute has provided for Parkinson's research in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government’s responsibility for delivering Parkinson’s disease research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT), with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). Between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24, the Department of Health and Social Care, via the NIHR, funded Parkinson’s research projects to a total value of £12.9 million of programme spend.
As well as funding research itself, the NIHR invests significantly in research expertise and capacity, specialist facilities, support services, and collaborations, to support and deliver research in England. Collectively this forms the NIHR’s infrastructure. The NIHR’s infrastructure enables the country’s leading experts to develop and deliver high-quality translational, clinical, and applied research into Parkinson’s disease. For example, in the financial year 2022/23, the NIHR Clinical Research Network supported 114 studies related to Parkinson’s disease. UKRI spent over £66 million on research into Parkinson’s disease between the financial years 2019/20 and 2023/24. The following table shows the breakdown of spend on Parkinson's research for the NIHR and UKRI, each year from 2019/20 to 2023/24:
| NIHR programmes | UKRI | Total |
2019/20 | £2,470,000 | £18,200,000 | £20,680,000 |
2020/21 | £2,180,000 | £11,970,000 | £14,160,000 |
2021/22 | £2,620,000 | £13,010,000 | £15,640,000 |
2022/23 | £2,570,000 | £11,890,000 | £14,470,000 |
2023/24 | £3,030,000 | £11,060,000 | £14,090,000 |
Total | £12,900,000 | £66,150,000 | £79,060,000 |
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to her policy paper entitled Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, published on 7 February 2024, when she plans to open her planned consultation with the dental profession on reforming the contract to make NHS work more attractive.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in Faster, simpler, fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, we are working on further reforms to the 2006 contract, in discussion with the dental profession, to properly reflect the care needed by different patients, and more fairly remunerate practices. We are developing options through consultation with the dental profession, in advance of a further announcement later this year. Any changes would be phased in from 2025 onwards.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of trends in levels of morale in the dental profession; and what steps her Department is taking to retain dentists.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes data on dentists’ working patterns, motivation, and morale, most recently on 25 April 2024, which is available at the following link:
The Dentistry Recovery Plan will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for patients, and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment.
We want to encourage all professionals to commit more of their time to National Health Service work, and to work in areas of the country with low provision of NHS dental care. That is why we are introducing Golden Hellos, as set out in our plan to reform and recover NHS dentistry. A Golden Hello of £20,000 will be offered per dentist, for a total of up to 240 dentists. The Golden Hellos will support practices in areas where recruitment is particularly challenging, and make a real difference to those patients needing dental care.
Furthermore, our New Patient Premium will offer dental practices cash incentives for taking on new patients, giving better access to anyone who has not received NHS dental care in the past two years. Dentists will receive an extra £15 or £50 per treatment, depending on the work required, which is on top of the funding they would already receive for this care.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the number of children unable to access NHS dentistry in England; and whether she has set a target date by which all children in England will be able to access an NHS dentist.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Dentistry Recovery Plan will make dental services faster, simpler, and fairer for patients, and will fund approximately 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. The Dentistry Recovery plan also sets out a new emphasis on prevention and good oral health in children. As part of this plan, our 'Smile for Life' initiative includes supporting nurseries and early years settings to incorporate good oral hygiene into daily routines, and providing advice to expectant parents on how to protect their baby’s teeth. The plan will deploy mobile dental teams into schools to provide advice and deliver preventative treatments to more than 165,000 children. Data on the number of children who have been seen by a National Health Service dentist in the last 12 months is available at the following link:
Data is also available on the number of adults who have tried to get an NHS dentist appointment in the last 24 months, and whether they were or were not successful. This data is available at the following link:
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will hold discussions with (a) Healthwatch England and (b) other relevant stakeholders on the potential impact of the change to the requirement for practices to update the NHS website on whether they are accepting NHS patients to include the phrase when availability allows on the accuracy of reporting of NHS dental access; and what proportion of dental practices are updating their websites in line with that requirement.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
National Health Service dentists are required to update their NHS website profiles at least every 90 days, to ensure patients have access to up-to-date information on where they can access care. Integrated care boards (ICBs) can review which practices in their areas have not updated their profiles in a 90-day period, and work with practices to ensure they comply.
Appointment availability can fluctuate daily, for example with patients cancelling and rescheduling appointments. We have updated the wording on the NHS website profiles to when availability allows, to portray a status which is more reflective of the way that most contractors are already working. This wording was added to the NHS.UK website on 2 April 2024.
Since March 2024 the number of practices reporting that they are taking on new patients via their NHS website profile has increased. Nearly 500 more dental practices on the NHS Find a Dentist website were showing themselves as open to new adult patients as of 8 April 2024, compared to the end of January 2024.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to her Department's Women's Health Strategy for England, published in August 2022, if she will publish a timeline for the commitments made to female same-sex couples on (a) intrauterine insemination and (b) IVF treatment in all integrated care boards.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
NHS England has made good progress in developing guidance to assist integrated care boards with implementing this policy commitment. The Department is working at pace with NHS England to share this guidance with the National Health Service. This commitment remains a priority for us in implementing the Women’s Health Strategy.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the implications for her policies of research on the impact of (a) microplastics and (b) nanoplastics on (i) atheromas and (ii) other cardiovascular events.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No such assessment has been made. While there are National Health Service trusts involved in research on the effects of microplastics on certain health issues, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, there is not an NHS policy position in respect to cardiovascular disease treatments at this time.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make a comparative assessment of the adequacy of the reasons the (a) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has been unable and (b) Scottish Medicines Consortium has been able to recommend Enhertu for use on the NHS.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) makes authoritative, evidence-based recommendations for the National Health Service in England on whether new licensed medicines should be routinely funded by the NHS, based on an assessment of their costs and benefits. Decisions on the availability of medicines in Scotland are a matter for the devolved administration.
The NICE published guidance in 2021 and 2023 recommending Enhertu, also known as trastuzumab deruxtecan, for the treatment of NHS patients with HER2-positive breast cancer through the Cancer Drugs Fund, and it is now available to eligible NHS patients in England in line with the NICE’s recommendations.
The NICE is currently evaluating Enhertu for the treatment of metastatic HER2-low breast cancer, and has not yet published final guidance. Stakeholders have had an opportunity to appeal against the NICE’s draft recommendations, and the NICE will consider any appeals through the established process and publish final guidance in due course.
Asked by: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department is collating data from toxicology reports of non-fatal overdose incidents to assess the risk from synthetic opioids.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is undertaking a number of actions to address the risk that synthetic opioids pose. The Department has a longstanding surveillance system in place to collect information on the nature and location of novel drug use, drug markets, and reports alerting us to drug harms experienced. We continue to monitor the threat posed by synthetic opioids, and are working to improve drug surveillance on synthetic opioids through the development of an early warning system. This will include, with the permission of coroners, toxicology results for fatal overdose cases from across England as soon as the information is available, enabling the Department to closely monitor the substances causing deaths.
We know that most overdoses take place when individuals are alone, or accompanied by others also using drugs. This means they are largely transitory and hidden events, with no opportunity for sampling. A key indicator, therefore, is those who do come into contact with first responders, who are administered the lifesaving opioid reversal drug naloxone, or who are admitted to hospital. Ambulance data represents an opportunity for rapidly identifying local spikes in overdoses and, for this purpose, we are establishing data feeds with ambulance trusts in England, on callouts where naloxone has been administered.