Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to help ensure the adequacy of access to (a) Creon and (b) other drugs that contain pancreatic enzymes for patients after pancreatic surgery.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are aware of supply issues with three pancreatic enzyme replacement therapies: Creon 10,000 gastro-resistant capsules; Creon 25,000 gastro-resistant capsules; and Nutrizym 22 gastro-resistant capsules. We understand that these are due to limited availability of active pharmaceutical ingredients, and manufacturing constraints in producing the volumes required to meet demand. The Department has issued guidance to healthcare professionals regarding treatment of patients while there is a disruption to the supply of these pancreatic enzyme replacement therapies. We are having regular conversations with the suppliers of these products to ask that they expedite deliveries and increase production forecasts, and to confirm that they are taking action to address the root causes of the issues, to ensure continuity of supply. We are also working with specialist importers to source unlicensed imports from abroad.
Whilst we can’t always prevent supply issues, we have a range of well-established tools and processes to mitigate risks to patients. These include close and regular engagement with suppliers, use of alternative strengths or forms of a medicine to allow patients to remain on the same product, expediting regulatory procedures, sourcing unlicensed imports from abroad, adding products to the restricted exports and hoarding list, use of Serious Shortage Protocols, and issuing National Health Service communications to provide management advice and information on the issue to healthcare professionals, so they can advise and support their patients.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
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 Royal Mail on the potential merits of treating NHS letters as first class post, in the context of possible reforms to the second class delivery service.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
My Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has written to Royal Mail regarding proposed reforms to the universal postal service, to ask what consideration has been given to patients and National Health Service impacts. A meeting with the Group Chief Executive of Royal Mail is currently being considered.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, if he will make an assessment of the potential implications for his policies of potential conflicts of interest in circumstances where the board members of deposit protection schemes are also landlords who choose to lodge deposits with the same scheme; and if he will make it his policy to require landlords to lodge deposits with deposit protection schemes with which they have no governance involvement.
Answered by Jacob Young - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
Landlords are required by law to protect a deposit in relation to most Assured Shorthold Tenancies and are free to choose with which government-authorised scheme they protect a tenant’s deposit.
The TDP providers are private companies that are operationally independent of Government. TDP providers are contractually obliged to avoid any conflict of interest arising which prejudices the independence and objectivity of the service provided.
Asked by: Charles Walker (Conservative - Broxbourne)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, pursuant to the Answer of 7 March 2024 to Question 16213 on Probate, what recent progress his Department has made on reducing waiting times in relation to probate grants.
Answered by Mike Freer - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Justice)
HMCTS remains focused on increasing outputs to reduce overall timeliness on all types of applications. Management information published by HMCTS shows the average mean length of time taken for a grant of probate (following receipt of the documents required) reduced by 3 weeks in March 2024 compared to February 2024. The average timeliness in March was 9 weeks.
The first quarter of 2024 (January to March 2024) saw the highest quarterly number of grants issued on record.
A full time series of Official Statistics back to Q3 2019 is published in the Family Court Statistics Quarterly https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-court-statistics-quarterly and currently covers the period up to December 2023.
More recent management information published by HMCTS (which does not go through the same level of quality assurance and analysis as the Family Court Statistics Quarterly) provides waiting time information up to March 2023 https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hmcts-management-information.