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 training places were allocated for GPs in each year since 2015.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes the number of posts and fill rates for medical specialty training programmes, including general practice training. Data for 2013 to 2025 is available at the following link:
https://medical.hee.nhs.uk/medical-training-recruitment/medical-specialty-training/fill-rates
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 is the requirement for consultant radiologists in the the NHS as of 1 June 2026 and what number were employed.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes monthly information on the composition of the workforce employed by National Health Service trusts and integrated care boards in England. This includes information on the number of consultant radiologists. The information can be found at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics
Information on the number of doctors by grade and specialty can be found for each month in the file ‘NHS HCHS Workforce Statistics, Trusts and core organisations – data table, [date]’ on worksheet ‘4’.
No specific central assessment has been made of the requirement for consultant radiologists in the NHS, with decisions on the provision of local services being managed by individual NHS service providers and commissioners.
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 patients were diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer in each year since 2015.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The National Disease Registration Service (NDRS) collects data on cancer incidence across a range of tumour types and stages. Data showing the annual incidence rate of stage four lung cancer can be found at the following link:
https://nhsd-ndrs.shinyapps.io/incidence_and_mortality/
The following table shows the incidence rate of stage four lung cancer from 2015 to the most recently published data available, from 2023:
Year | Geography type | Stage | NDRS main | Incidence |
2015 | England | 4 | Lung | 18,563 |
2016 | England | 4 | Lung | 18,821 |
2017 | England | 4 | Lung | 18,315 |
2018 | England | 4 | Lung | 18,158 |
2019 | England | 4 | Lung | 16,998 |
2020 | England | 4 | Lung | 17,149 |
2021 | England | 4 | Lung | 17,136 |
2022 | England | 4 | Lung | 16,663 |
2023 | England | 4 | Lung | 15,942 |
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 is the current wait time for cancer patients, from GP referral to being seen by a specialist in the Widnes and Halewood constituency.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The Department does not hold cancer waiting times data at a parliamentary constituency level. NHS England publishes cancer waiting times statistics by National Health Service provider and integrated care board, including performance against the faster diagnosis standard (FDS) which replaced the former two-week wait standard in October 2023, as the FDS measures whether patients referred urgently with suspected cancer have cancer diagnosed or ruled out within 28 days.
NHS England also continues to publish data on the time from an urgent suspected cancer referral to a first outpatient attendance and from an urgent breast symptomatic referral to a first hospital assessment. However, these measures do not necessarily indicate when a patient is first seen by a cancer specialist, as they may include attendance with a consultant-led team member, attendance at a diagnostic clinic, or a direct diagnostic test through a straight-to-test pathway. This data is available at the following link:
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 GPs there were in Widnes each year since 2020.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Secretary of State for Wales
The following table shows full time equivalent (FTE) doctors in general practice in Widnes and Halewood constituency in the period between March 2020 and March 2026:
Date | All doctors in general practice | Fully qualified general practitioners | General practitioners in training grades |
March 2020 | 37.2 | 31.9 | 5.3 |
March 2021 | 40.2 | 33.4 | 6.8 |
March 2022 | 41.8 | 34.4 | 7.4 |
March 2023 | 42.5 | 34.0 | 8.5 |
March 2024 | 34.7 | 28.5 | 6.2 |
March 2025 | 40.2 | 31.9 | 8.3 |
March 2026 | 42.5 | 34.4 | 8.1 |
Source: NHS England
Notes:
Data does not include estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid staff records.
Data does not include general practitioners (GPs) employed directly by primary care networks (PCNs) as PCNs may operate across constituency boundaries.
FTE refers to the proportion of full time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. In GPs in Training Grade contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours for consistency.
Figures shown do not include staff working in Prisons, Army Bases, Educational Establishments, Specialist Care Centres including Drug Rehabilitation Centres, Walk-In Centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.
Practices in Widnes and Halewood constituency were identified using the practice postcode and the National Statistics Postcode Lookup.
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 the average waiting time is for patients to receive results from a CT scan at each acute hospital Trust in England as at 1 June 2026.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The average waiting time for patients to receive diagnostic results is tracked and published using the Diagnostic Imaging Dataset (DIDS).
The median number of days from request to test for diagnostic imaging, including computed tomography scans, for 2025/26 is available on table two at the following link:
This covers diagnostic imaging in all settings, including emergency referrals, which in most cases would have been delivered on the same day. Data from June 2026 is not yet available, but NHS England is implementing improvements to DIDS in 2026/27 and data for May will be published in due course.
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 (a) CT Scanners and (b) MRI scanners were in NHS hospitals on (i) 1 April 2015, (ii) 1 April 2020 and (iii) April 2026.
Answered by Sharon Hodgson
The number of computed tomography (CT) scanners and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners in National Health Service hospitals is published by the National Imaging Data Collection (NIDC) asset register.
The published NIDC data does not cover data from 2015 or 2020, but the latest published data shows that there were 656 MRI scanners and 757 CT scanners across England in 2024/25. The publications for 2022/23 to 2024/25 can be found at the following link:
The 2025/26 NIDC closes for submissions shortly, with publication of this data expected later this year. Published data is shown by NHS provider, both acute and specialist NHS trusts, by integrated care board, and by imaging network.
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, pursuant to the Answer of 27 June 2025 to Question 61488 on Warrington and Halton Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: Radiology, what the requirement for radiographers is at Warrington and Halton University Hospitals Trust.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Decisions about staffing levels are a matter for individual National Health Service trusts. NHS trusts manage their workforce planning and recruitment at a local level, ensuring they have the right number of staff in place with the right skills mix, to deliver safe and effective care. The Department does not hold data on the planned radiographer workforce at the Warrington and Halton University Hospitals Trust.
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 consultant posts are vacant in the each of the acute hospital trusts in the Cheshire and Merseyside ICB.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold information on the number of consultant vacancies at hospitals in the Cheshire and Merseyside Integrated Care Board. NHS England publishes regular high-level statistics on vacancies across National Health Service trusts, which are available at the following link:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-vacancies-survey
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 radiographers will be trained in each year until 2030.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Later this year, we will publish a new workforce plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and will ensure the National Health Service has the right people, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.