Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many injured service personal required rehabilitation services in each armed service in each year since 2015; and how much his Department on rehabilitation of injured service personnel in each service in the same period.
Answered by Al Carns - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for Veterans)
The table below presents the number of UK Armed Forces personnel who have had at least one appointment at Primary Care Rehabilitation Facilities (PCRF), Regional Rehabilitation Units (RRU) and/or Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) in each year since 2015, broken down by service.
Year | Total | Navy | Army | RAF |
2015 | 58,144 | 9,450 | 36,807 | 11,824 |
2016 | 57,332 | 9,348 | 36,053 | 11,847 |
2017 | 55,605 | 9,523 | 34,653 | 11,346 |
2018 | 53,318 | 9,371 | 32,641 | 11,229 |
2019 | 52,981 | 9,678 | 31,775 | 11,446 |
2020 | 42,138 | 7,905 | 25,200 | 8,959 |
2021 | 45,526 | 8,640 | 27,524 | 9,281 |
2022 | 46,673 | 8,959 | 27,920 | 9,739 |
2023 | 45,137 | 8,696 | 26,828 | 9,572 |
2024 | 45,217 | 8,547 | 27,203 | 9,410 |
The table below presents the total spent on rehabilitation at Regional Rehabilitation Units (RRUs), Defence Primary Health Care Rehab Headquarters and the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre (DMRC) from the start of 2015 to 8 January 2025.The figures below do not include costs for Primary Care Rehab Facilities (PCRFs). PCRFs provide primary rehabilitation for Service Personnel who do not require referral into an RRU. PCRFs costs are embedded within Medical Centres and the costs cannot be extracted.
As rehabilitation is delivered in a tri-service environment, it is not possible to break this data down by Service.
Financial Year | Total £ |
2015-16 | 28,391,515 |
2016-17 | 22,895,461 |
2017-18 | 27,841,573 |
2018-19 | 31,852,392 |
2019-20 | 40,041,538 |
2020-21 | 32,473,582 |
2021-22 | 35,275,941 |
2022-23 | 39,037,736 |
2023-24 | 41,468,534 |
2024-25 | 30,885,020 |
Total | 332,536,267 |
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the sickness rate was for service personnel by rank in each year since 2015.
Answered by Al Carns - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence) (Minister for Veterans)
This information is not held in the format requested.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of classifying clinical engineers as healthcare professionals under the Health and Care Worker Visa.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Department for Education) (Equalities)
The Home Office keeps all its immigration visa routes under regular review, which includes consulting the Department of Health and Social Care on which occupations should be eligible for the Health and Care Visa.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many school days were lost due to weather conditions in each year since 2010.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department does not specifically collect data on school days lost due to weather conditions.
From the start of the 2024/25 academic year, it became mandatory for schools to share attendance data with the department. Attendance data can be found at: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/pupil-attendance-in-schools.
Other attendance statistics and past releases are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/statistics-pupil-absence. This shows pupil absence statistics from May 2010 onwards and pupil attendance statistics from September 2022.
It is for individual settings and responsible bodies to determine their approach to closure based on their own risk assessment. Closures should be considered a last resort, and the imperative is for settings to remain open where it is safe to do so. Where a school was planning to be open for a session but then has to close unexpectedly, for example due to adverse weather, the attendance register is not taken as usual because there is no session. For statistical purposes this is counted as a ‘not possible’ attendance.
Where settings are temporarily closed, individual settings and responsible bodies should consider providing remote education for the duration of the closure in line with departmental guidance. Providing remote education does not change the imperative to remain open, or to reopen as soon as possible. Pupils who are absent from school and receiving remote education still need to be recorded as absent using the most appropriate absence code. Schools should keep a record of and monitor pupil’s engagement with remote education, but this is not formally tracked in the attendance register. Guidance for schools on providing remote education is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/providing-remote-education-guidance-for-schools/providing-remote-education-guidance-for-schools. Additional guidance for parents on remote education is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/providing-remote-education-information-to-parents-template.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what the average number of training days undertaken by serving army personnel was in each year since 2015 by rank.
Answered by Luke Pollard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Ministry of Defence)
The Army invests significantly in skills, education and training for its people to build the problem-solving attributes, teamwork, resilience, intellect and creativity needed to be successful now and in the future.
A comprehensive professional pipeline trains soldiers and officers from the basics of being a soldier, through progressive levels of trade training, as well as the leadership skills required at all ranks. More broadly, Defence continues to invest in collective training capabilities for its Armed Forces and, under the Future Soldier programme, the Army is modernising collective training to better prepare for the challenges personnel will face in modern warfare.
We do not centrally hold the information in the format that has been requested due to the broad range and scope of training that can be undertaken by all Army personnel, including both individual and collective training.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which organisation is responsible for procuring radiotherapy machines.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Responsibility for purchasing radiotherapy treatment machines sits with local systems. The Government committed £70 million for new machines in last year’s Budget, to ensure that the most advanced treatment is available to patients who need it.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people in Widnes and Halewood constituency were being treated for lung cancer as of 1 October 2024.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
We do not collect data on the number of people treated for lung cancer by constituency. However, we do have the total number of people being treated for lung cancer across trusts throughout the country. The number of people who received either a first or subsequent treatment for lung cancer in September 2024 was 4,676.
Asked by: Derek Twigg (Labour - Widnes and Halewood)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what funding his Department has provided for child brain tumour research in each year since 2015.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The Department invests £1.5 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and NIHR research expenditure for all cancers was £121.8 million in 2022/23. Cancer is a major area of NIHR spend, reflecting its high priority.
For research specifically on child brain tumours, the NIHR has made three direct awards since 2015 with a total value of approximately £650,000. The following table shows the NIHR’s committed spend on research into child brain tumours in each year since 2015/16, and the total award budget:
Financial year | Total |
2015/16 | £0 |
2016/17 | £0 |
2017/18 | £54,305 |
2018/19 | £59,110 |
2019/20 | £64,058 |
2020/21 | £57,691 |
2021/22 | £0 |
2022/23 | £48,801 |
2023/24 | £179,149 |
Total award budget | £649,614 |
Between 2018/19 and 2022/23, the NIHR directly invested £11.3 million in research projects and programmes focused on brain tumors across 15 awards. Additionally, wider NIHR investment in research infrastructure, supporting the facilities, services, and the research workforce, supported the delivery of 227 brain cancer research studies over this period, enabling an estimated 8,500 people to participate in research at estimated cost of £31.5 million. This NIHR infrastructure-supported research included a significant number of studies involving children and young people, including those delivered by NIHR Great Ormond Street Biomedical Research Centre.
In September 2024, the NIHR announced new research funding opportunities for brain cancer research, spanning both adult and paediatric populations. This includes a national NIHR Brain Tumour Research Consortium, to ensure the most promising research opportunities are made available to adult and child patients, and a new funding call to generate high quality evidence in brain tumour care, support, and rehabilitation. Further information on these opportunities is available at the following link:
https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/new-funding-opportunities-novel-brain-tumour-research-launched
The NIHR continues to encourage and welcome applications for research into any aspect of human health, including childhood cancer. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.