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 assessment has she made of establishing an interim clinician-led access pathway for eligible patients with Friedreich’s ataxia while NICE’s appraisal of omaveloxolone remains unresolved, and what comparative assessment her Department has made of the access arrangements available in Scotland and Wales.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Further to the answer provided in the House of Lords on 19 October in response to Question HL3794, Biogen must confirm that it is willing to re-engage with the evaluation process before further action on access to Omaveloxolone for National Health Service patients can be considered.
The Early Access to Medicines Scheme and Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway exist to support the development of medicines before they are licensed, which is not applicable in this case. Nor can NHS England consider providing funding through the Innovative Medicines Fund, in a situation where a company has failed to engage with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, as doing so would circumvent and undermine the established and independent appraisal process in a damaging way.
Health is devolved, and decisions on access to medicines in Scotland and Wales are matters for the respective devolved administrations.
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, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of whether the Early Access to Medicines Scheme, Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway and Innovative Medicines Fund providing an interim route for Friedreich’s ataxia patients.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Further to the answer provided in the House of Lords on 19 October in response to Question HL3794, Biogen must confirm that it is willing to re-engage with the evaluation process before further action on access to Omaveloxolone for National Health Service patients can be considered.
The Early Access to Medicines Scheme and Innovative Licensing and Access Pathway exist to support the development of medicines before they are licensed, which is not applicable in this case. Nor can NHS England consider providing funding through the Innovative Medicines Fund, in a situation where a company has failed to engage with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, as doing so would circumvent and undermine the established and independent appraisal process in a damaging way.
Health is devolved, and decisions on access to medicines in Scotland and Wales are matters for the respective devolved administrations.
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 are on the waiting list for access to NHS Dentistry.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested by the Hon Member is not recorded at a constituency level.
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 average age of diagnosis of children with Asthma in the Cheshire and Mersey ICB area.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon Member to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidance for asthma diagnosis, which is available at the following link:
https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/asthma/diagnosis/assessment/
There are 22,025 children, those who are under 16 years old, registered to a Cheshire and Merseyside general practice with a diagnosis of asthma in their primary care record. They have an average age at diagnosis of five years and 10 days, based on the earliest confirmed asthma diagnosis recorded in the available primary care data.
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 earliest age a child can receive a diagnosis for Asthma.
Answered by James Frith - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I refer the Hon Member to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s guidance for asthma diagnosis, which is available at the following link:
https://cks.nice.org.uk/topics/asthma/diagnosis/assessment/
There are 22,025 children, those who are under 16 years old, registered to a Cheshire and Merseyside general practice with a diagnosis of asthma in their primary care record. They have an average age at diagnosis of five years and 10 days, based on the earliest confirmed asthma diagnosis recorded in the available primary care data.
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.