Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to ensure that in advance of the 9th Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control the WHO and its Europe region endorse the UK position that vaping products are an effective smoking cessation option.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Departmental officials will be attending the 9th World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Conference of the Parties (CoP) as is usual practice for such events. At the CoP, officials would expect to set out the United Kingdom Government’s position on vaping.
Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to represent the UK at the 9th Conference of the Parties to the World Health Organisation’s Framework of Convention for Tobacco Control; and whether his Department plans to advocate within that forum for the UK position that vaping products are an effective smoking cessation tool.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Departmental officials will be attending the 9th World Health Organisation Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Conference of the Parties (CoP) as is usual practice for such events. At the CoP, officials would expect to set out the United Kingdom Government’s position on vaping.
Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to amend the legislation on vaping implemented under the EU Tobacco Products Directive after the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016 (TRPR) enabled us to introduce measures to regulate e-cigarettes to reduce the risk of harm to children and protect against any risk of renormalisation of tobacco use, provide assurance on relative safety for users, and provide legal certainty for businesses. The Government has committed to review the TRPR by May 2021 to ensure they are fit for purpose.
Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to encourage smokers to switch to vaping products.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government’s Tobacco Control Plan for England commits Public Health England (PHE) to include in its quit smoking campaigns messages about e-cigarettes.
Since the publication of the Plan in July 2017, PHE’s annual Stoptober campaign has featured e-cigarettes as one of the evidence-based quitting support options for smokers, and the New Year smoking health harms awareness campaign has made clear the reduction in health risk when a smoker switches completely to vaping.
PHE encourages all local Stop Smoking Services in England to provide additional support to people who want to use an e-cigarette in their quit attempt to maximise their chance of success. The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, includes a new universal smoking cessation offer for long-term users of specialist mental health services, the option of switching to e-cigarettes while in inpatient settings.
Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to promote vaping products as an effective way for smokers to quit smoking.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Government’s Tobacco Control Plan for England commits Public Health England (PHE) to include in its quit smoking campaigns messages about e-cigarettes.
Since the publication of the Plan in July 2017, PHE’s annual Stoptober campaign has featured e-cigarettes as one of the evidence-based quitting support options for smokers, and the New Year smoking health harms awareness campaign has made clear the reduction in health risk when a smoker switches completely to vaping.
PHE encourages all local Stop Smoking Services in England to provide additional support to people who want to use an e-cigarette in their quit attempt to maximise their chance of success. The NHS Long Term Plan, published in January 2019, includes a new universal smoking cessation offer for long-term users of specialist mental health services, the option of switching to e-cigarettes while in inpatient settings.
Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much money NHS hospitals have been fined for failing to treat a patient on the non-urgent referral-to-treatment waiting list within 18 weeks in the last five financial years.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Providers of National Health Service-funded healthcare services are expected to meet a range of waiting time standards and other operational standards and quality requirements, in order to deliver the rights and pledges in the NHS Constitution and to achieve other national priorities. These requirements are set out in the NHS Standard Contract, which is used by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) for all contracts with hospital providers of NHS healthcare services. The Contract sets out the consequences of breaches of the waiting time standards and other requirements. In many cases, this consequence is in the form of a financial sanction.
However, since April 2016, the operation of certain contractual sanctions for reduced performance against waiting time standards, including four hour and 12 hour waits in accident and emergency (A&E) and the Referral to Treatment 18 week incomplete pathways standard has been suspended where a provider is receiving funding from the national Sustainability and Transformation Fund (STF) and meets certain other specified conditions. The overall effect is that, in 2017/18, the Contract sanctions for A&E performance are not being applied to the majority of NHS hospitals – only to a very small minority which refused the offer of funding from the STF and the associated conditions.
Since 2015/16, NHS Improvement has published a high level summary of this information in their Quarterly reports, the latest of which is for Quarter 3 of 2017/18 and is available at the following link:
https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/quarterly-performance-nhs-provider-sector-quarter-3-201718/
Asked by: Gareth Johnson (Conservative - Dartford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much money NHS hospitals have been fined for not reaching the target of 95% of people being seen in A&E in four hours in the last five financial years.
Answered by Steve Barclay - Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Providers of National Health Service-funded healthcare services are expected to meet a range of waiting time standards and other operational standards and quality requirements, in order to deliver the rights and pledges in the NHS Constitution and to achieve other national priorities. These requirements are set out in the NHS Standard Contract, which is used by clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) for all contracts with hospital providers of NHS healthcare services. The Contract sets out the consequences of breaches of the waiting time standards and other requirements. In many cases, this consequence is in the form of a financial sanction.
However, since April 2016, the operation of certain contractual sanctions for reduced performance against waiting time standards, including four hour and 12 hour waits in accident and emergency (A&E) and the Referral to Treatment 18 week incomplete pathways standard has been suspended where a provider is receiving funding from the national Sustainability and Transformation Fund (STF) and meets certain other specified conditions. The overall effect is that, in 2017/18, the Contract sanctions for A&E performance are not being applied to the majority of NHS hospitals – only to a very small minority which refused the offer of funding from the STF and the associated conditions.
Since 2015/16, NHS Improvement has published a high level summary of this information in their Quarterly reports, the latest of which is for Quarter 3 of 2017/18 and is available at the following link:
https://improvement.nhs.uk/resources/quarterly-performance-nhs-provider-sector-quarter-3-201718/