Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what pilots are currently underway in connection with the Government's plans to replace paper Healthy Start Vouchers with digital cards.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The NHS Business Services Authority is leading the work to digitise the Healthy Start scheme, on behalf of Department, to make it easier for families to apply for, receive and use Healthy Start benefits.
The NHS Business Services Authority is running a private pilot in Tower Hamlets. This group will be the first to transition to digital pre-paid cards.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
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 how much the Government has spent on external consultants in connection with the development of a digital card scheme to replace paper Healthy Start Vouchers.
Answered by Jo Churchill
The Department spent £1,909,149 (excluding VAT) on external consultants in developing a digital card scheme to replace paper Healthy Start Vouchers.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Green Book COVID vaccine schedule in Chapter 14a, whether it is Government policy that frontline funeral operatives and mortuary technicians are frontline healthcare staff, as recommended in the recommendations by staff groups, and relevant to Priority Group 2 as advised by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) identified that the vaccination of frontline healthcare workers should be a priority for the COVID-19 vaccination programme. Frontline staff are at high risk of acquiring COVID-19 infection but also of transmitting that infection to multiple persons who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 as well as to other staff in a healthcare environment.
Funeral operatives have been prioritised for vaccination in cohort two and staff will be eligible for prioritisation if they carry out functions which require them to have contact with multiple vulnerable patients in a healthcare setting and at a high risk of exposure to COVID-19.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
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 appointing a Minister for Infection Management.
Answered by Edward Argar
Lord Bethell of Romford is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for health protection and antimicrobial resistance. Infection prevention and control measures, healthcare associated infections, and use of antimicrobials are covered within this remit.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the Department has made of the potential merits of developing a holistic and whole-system approach to antimicrobial resistance, sepsis and infection prevention.
Answered by Edward Argar
The United Kingdom’s five-year national action plan for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) takes a holistic and comprehensive approach across humans, animals, agriculture, the environment and food.
The national action plan includes a strengthened focus on infection prevention and control, with commitments to cut the number of resistant infections by 10% by 2025 and to halve levels of healthcare associated Gram-negative blood stream infections by 2023-2024.
It is critical that our work on sepsis and AMR is closely aligned. Sepsis forms an important part of NHS England and NHS Improvement’s AMR Programme, which continues to drive improvements in the prevention and management of infections and optimal antimicrobial use.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 20 October 2020 to Question 100504 on Sepsis, what steps his Department has taken to specifically support the diagnosis of Sepsis.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
To support the delivery of objectives set out in the ‘UK’s 20-year vision for Antimicrobial Resistance’ and five-year national action plan, NHS England and NHS Improvement have specifically committed to development of and access to diagnostics in relation to infections. This commitment includes:
- supporting the establishment of the Accelerated Access Collaborative and Pathway and ensure its work can support antimicrobials and diagnostics;
- preparing a two to five-year urgent diagnostics priority list and use Target Product Profiles for research and development;
- introducing incentives to develop and evaluate rapid diagnostics;
- streamlining the regulation processes to help get new diagnostics through as quickly as possible, including developing evidence-based guidance for using tests, and;
- working with National Health Service partners and industry to tackle barriers to new innovations being adopted in the NHS, building on the Life Sciences Industrial Strategy and the response to the Accelerated Access Review.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the capacity and effectiveness of diagnostics throughout the NHS.
Answered by Edward Argar
Professor Sir Mike Richards was commissioned to undertake a review of diagnostics capacity (NHS Long Term Plan, 3.55). The report, ‘Diagnostics: recovery and renewal’, was discussed at the NHS England and NHS Improvement public Board meeting on 1 October 2020. The report was published with the Board papers and is available at the following link:
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
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 diagnostic testing for sepsis and bloodstream infections.
Answered by Nadine Dorries
Since 2014, the Government has invested over £360 million in antimicrobial resistance research and development, including funding to support the development of diagnostics for infection. In order to support the work in delivering upon objectives set out in both the ‘UK’s 20-year vision for Antimicrobial Resistance’ and five-year national action plan, NHS England and NHS Improvement has laid out human health-related commitments specifically regarding the development of and access to diagnostics in relation to infections.
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, how many and what proportion of people in Neath constituency have (a) opted out after being auto-enrolled into a workplace pension and (b) saved more than the auto-enrolment minimum contribution.
Answered by Guy Opperman
Automatic enrolment has achieved a quiet revolution through getting employees into the habit of pension saving, and reversing the decline in workplace pension participation in the decade prior to these reforms. Workplace pension participation rates are being transformed with 87% of eligible employees saving into one in 2018, up from 55% in 2012.
The DWP does not hold data for individual constituencies in relation to opt outs or the number of individuals who have saved above the automatic enrolment minimum contribution level. However, we do know that overall around 9% of automatically enrolled workers have chosen to opt out which is significantly below original estimates; and our latest evaluation report shows that, in April 2017, approximately 5.9 million eligible employees were already meeting the April 2019 minimum contribution rates.
In the Neath constituency, since 2012, approximately 3,000 eligible jobholders have been automatically enrolled and 860 employers have met their duties.
Automatic Enrolment Evaluation Report 2018, available via the following weblink: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/764964/Automatic_Enrolment_Evaluation_Report_2018.pdf.
The Pensions Regulator’s data on Automatic enrolment declaration of compliance by constituency, available via the following weblink: https://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/en/document-library/research-and-analysis/data-requests
Asked by: Christina Rees (Labour (Co-op) - Neath)
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 implications for his policies of the recommendations of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sepsis Annual Report 2019; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The United Kingdom’s five-year antimicrobial resistance (AMR) strategy, published in January 2019, includes the commitment to develop a real-time patient level data source of a patient’s infection, treatment and resistance history which will be used to inform their treatment and the development of interventions to tackle severe infection, sepsis and AMR. This commitment was reaffirmed in the open consultation ‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’, published by the Department and Cabinet Office on 22 July 2019.
Public Health England continues to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of sepsis by building sepsis messaging into the national Start4life Information Service for Parents email programme which targets parents of zero to five-year olds. Any nationally supported campaigns must be aimed at appropriate audiences and deliver measurable outcomes. The Department looks to NHS England and NHS Improvement’s Cross-System Sepsis Programme Board, which brings together a group of front-line experts from across the health and care system including the UK Sepsis Trust, for advice on the best interventions to improve patient outcomes.
NHS England and NHS Improvement will consider other recommendations of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sepsis Annual Report 2019 in the context of its overall work on infection prevention.