Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 invest in specialist Tourette’s syndrome services and care across (a) St Helens Clinical Commissioning Group area, (b) the North West region and (c) England.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The majority of services for people with Tourette’s syndrome are commissioned locally by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), through local community paediatric services or child and adolescent mental health services, with the pathways varying across the country. These services will be appropriate for the majority of children and young people with Tourette’s syndrome.
For those requiring specialist support, there are specialised tertiary services across the country with focused multidisciplinary teams assessing and supporting children with tics, Tourette’s syndrome and motor stereotypies and their families. The potential commissioning of a local tertiary service for tics and Tourette’s is under review by CCGs across the North West and NHS England and NHS Improvement.
NHS St Helens CCG has tasked its local providers to review the needs of children and young people from St Helens who have been discharged from Alder Hey Children’s Hospital’s Tourette’s service in the preceding six months and has temporarily invested £30,000 to support this.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department invested through the National Institute for Health Research into research on Tourette’s syndrome in each year since 2010.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Since 2010, £3.3 million has been invested into research on Tourette’s syndrome through the National Institute for Health Research.
The following table shows spending on research on Tourette’s syndrome in each financial year since 2010.
Year | Research spend |
2010/11 | £0 |
2011/12 | £149,296 |
2012/13 | £281,996 |
2013/14 | £356,558 |
2014/15 | £204,102 |
2015/16 | £197,677 |
2016/17 | £134,129 |
2017/18 | £313,302 |
2018/19 | £612,658 |
2019/20 | £669,635 |
2020/21 | £362,080 |
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what proportion of Health Education England’s clinical psychology intake has opted to undertake a specialist placement focusing on Tourette’s syndrome in each of the last five years.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
This information is not held centrally.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 the number of patients waiting for (a) routine and (b) urgent dental care across the St Helens Clinical Commissioning Group area.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
NHS England and NHS Improvement have confirmed that within the St Helens Clinical Commissioning Group area, there are no patients on a waiting list for urgent treatment. No estimate has been made of the number of patients waiting for routine appointments as this is managed at individual practice level.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what additional support he has allocated to the dental sector to increase capacity for (a) routine patient appointments and (b) urgent care during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
During the pandemic over 600 urgent treatment centres have been opened to support the delivery of urgent care. National Health Service dentists have been asked to maximise safe throughput to meet as many prioritised needs as possible, focussing first on urgent care and vulnerable groups, followed by overdue routine care. This has been underpinned by the requirement for dental providers to deliver 60% of contracted units of dental activity and 80% of units of orthodontic activity for the first six months of 2021/22 in order to receive full payment of their NHS contract value.
Guidance has also been issued by NHS England on the use of flexible commissioning to target restricted dental capacity to those patient groups that most need support.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 make PCR covid-19 testing kits more (a) affordable and (b) widely available for the purpose of international travel.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Since requirements were introduced for international travel testing, the costs have fallen significantly. We are committed to working with the travel industry and private testing providers to reduce the cost of testing. NHS Test and Trace tests are available at the market mid-point.
To increase the availability of polymerase chain reaction testing we have published a list of over 250 private test providers based on cost, turnaround times and geographic location on GOV.UK.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what role the (a) Liverpool City Region Combine Authority, (b) Merseyside Resilience Forum, (c) St Helens Council and (d) St Helens CCG play in public health policy and practice.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Liverpool City Region Combined Authority does not have any specific public health functions, but it has a range of responsibilities which it can act on and interact with people’s health including relating to transport, housing and employment. Local resilience fora bring together multi-agency partnerships from local public services including the emergency services and the National Health Service to plan and prepare for localised incidents and emergencies. Upper tier local authorities, including St Helens Council, have a statutory duty to take steps to improve the health of their population and also play a vital role in protecting health locally. Clinical commissioning groups commission most of the hospital and community NHS services in the local area for which they are responsible.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 in conjunction with NHS Hospital Trusts to ensure that young people are able to safely have a companion present for key cancer appointments and treatments during the covid-19 outbreak.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We understand the need for young people to be accompanied by their parents and caregivers at appointments and recommend that patients be accompanied where appropriate and necessary. The current guidance, published on 13 October 2020, allows visiting in outpatient and diagnostic settings in a COVID-19 secure way.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
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 effectiveness of mass covid-19 testing in Liverpool; and if he will publish the data that supports that assessment.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government published the ‘Liverpool COVID-19 community testing pilot: interim evaluation report summary’ which is available at the following link:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/liverpool-covid-19-community-testing-pilot-interim-evaluation-report-summary/liverpool-covid-19-community-testing-pilot-interim-evaluation-report-summary
The report evaluates the data on the biological, behavioural and systems aspects of the pilot and its early public health impacts. A final assessment and a more detailed report on the effectiveness of mass testing and the data to support will follow later in 2021.
Asked by: Conor McGinn (Independent - St Helens North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what additional financial support he is providing to the NHS to tackle the adverse effects of the covid-19 outbreak on the (a) detection and (b) treatment of heart and circulatory conditions.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The recently announced Spending Review included funding of £1 billion for all health conditions to address backlogs, tackle long waiting lists and facilitating up to one million extra checks, scans and additional operations.
The NHS Long Term Plan also includes work to raise awareness of the symptoms of heart failure and to ensure early and rapid access to diagnostic tests and treatment. This remains a priority for NHS England and NHS Improvement during the COVID-19 pandemic.