Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with (a) NICE and (b) NHS England on encouraging the adoption of new treatments for (i) sickle cell disease and (ii) beta-thalassaemia.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department regularly discusses a range of issues with colleagues in NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), related to patient access to new treatments.
The NICE appraises all new licensed medicines, and its recommendations are developed independently in line with its established methods and processes, on the basis of an assessment of the available evidence, and through extensive engagement with stakeholders. NHS England is legally required to fund treatments recommended in NICE technology appraisal guidance.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with the (a) National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and (b) Chancellor of the Exchequer on the application of NICE's evaluation methods to support value assessment for one-off curative treatments for which health gains are accrued over time.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Department officials regularly discuss a range of issues with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and HM Treasury. The NICE is responsible for the methods and processes it uses to develop its recommendations, and concluded a comprehensive review of the methods and processes it uses for health technology evaluation, in January 2022. The NICE carried out the review through extensive engagement with stakeholders, including officials within the Department. The NICE introduced a number of changes that make its methods fairer, faster, more consistent, and appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies, such as cell and gene therapies.
The NICE is monitoring the impact of the changes following the methods review and has committed to considering modular updates to its methods and processes in the future, including a planned update focussed on health inequalities in 2024. The NICE has been able to recommend several advanced therapeutic medicinal products, including one-off gene therapies, for National Health Service funding that are now available to NHS patients in line with NICE’s recommendations.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with NICE on developing its methodologies to ensure future access to (a) innovative one-time treatments and (b) cell and genetic therapies.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Department officials regularly discuss a range of issues with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and HM Treasury. The NICE is responsible for the methods and processes it uses to develop its recommendations, and concluded a comprehensive review of the methods and processes it uses for health technology evaluation, in January 2022. The NICE carried out the review through extensive engagement with stakeholders, including officials within the Department. The NICE introduced a number of changes that make its methods fairer, faster, more consistent, and appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies, such as cell and gene therapies.
The NICE is monitoring the impact of the changes following the methods review and has committed to considering modular updates to its methods and processes in the future, including a planned update focussed on health inequalities in 2024. The NICE has been able to recommend several advanced therapeutic medicinal products, including one-off gene therapies, for National Health Service funding that are now available to NHS patients in line with NICE’s recommendations.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions she has had with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on updates in the way that it assesses medicines that reduce health inequalities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Department officials regularly discuss a range of issues with colleagues in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and HM Treasury. The NICE is responsible for the methods and processes it uses to develop its recommendations, and concluded a comprehensive review of the methods and processes it uses for health technology evaluation, in January 2022. The NICE carried out the review through extensive engagement with stakeholders, including officials within the Department. The NICE introduced a number of changes that make its methods fairer, faster, more consistent, and appropriate to the evaluation of emerging new technologies, such as cell and gene therapies.
The NICE is monitoring the impact of the changes following the methods review and has committed to considering modular updates to its methods and processes in the future, including a planned update focussed on health inequalities in 2024. The NICE has been able to recommend several advanced therapeutic medicinal products, including one-off gene therapies, for National Health Service funding that are now available to NHS patients in line with NICE’s recommendations.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of patients with type 1 diabetes use (a) finger-pricking monitoring and (b) continuous monitoring to track their glucose levels.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Standard care for type 1 diabetes involves regularly measuring blood glucose levels by self-monitoring, blood testing, or by using a continuous glucose monitor, real-time or intermittently scanned.
The NHS Long Term Plan committed that 20% of people with type 1 diabetes would benefit from life changing flash glucose monitors. Data to quarter three of 2022/23 shows that 73% of people with type 1 diabetes were prescribed flash glucose monitoring, against the 20% target. As a result of the recent National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance that also recommended that insulin dependent patients with type 2 diabetes should benefit from flash or continuous glucose monitoring devices, we are now starting to see a growth in prescribing within the type 2 diabetes patient group.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of patients with type 1 diabetes use real time continuous glucose monitoring to manage their diabetes.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Standard care for type 1 diabetes involves regularly measuring blood glucose levels by self-monitoring, blood testing, or by using a continuous glucose monitor, real-time or intermittently scanned.
The NHS Long Term Plan committed that 20% of people with type 1 diabetes would benefit from life changing flash glucose monitors. Data to quarter three of 2022/23 shows that 73% of people with type 1 diabetes were prescribed flash glucose monitoring, against the 20% target. As a result of the recent National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidance that also recommended that insulin dependent patients with type 2 diabetes should benefit from flash or continuous glucose monitoring devices, we are now starting to see a growth in prescribing within the type 2 diabetes patient group.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
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 implications for her policies of the report by Together for Short Lives entitled The deep disparity in NHS funding for children who need hospice care, published on 13 December 2023.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises that access to high-quality, palliative and end of life care can make all the difference to individuals and their loved ones. The commissioning of children and young people’s palliative and end of life care services is the statutory duty of integrated care boards (ICBs). ICBs must commission palliative and end of life care services in response to the needs of their population, provided by a range of local organisations with the experience and skills to meet those needs.
Whilst the majority of palliative and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at end of life and their families. Most hospices are charitable, independent organisations which receive some statutory funding for providing NHS services. The amount of funding hospices receive is dependent on many factors, including what other statutory services are available within the ICB footprint. Charitable hospices are autonomous organisations that provide a range of services which go beyond that which statutory services are legally required to provide. Consequently, the funding arrangements reflect this.
Due to the way the hospice movement organically grew, hospice locations were largely not planned with geographic or demographic purposes as a driving force. Therefore, there are inequalities with access to hospice services, especially for those living in rural or socio-economically deprived areas. It is therefore vital that hospices and statutory services work together to provide ensure their populations have access to palliative and end of life care when they need it.
At a national level, in line with the NHS Long Term Plan commitment, NHS England (NHSE) has provided circa £12 million match-funding to participating ICBs (and formerly clinical commissioning groups) between 2020/21 and 2023/24 which committed to invest in children and young people’s palliative and end of life care, including children and young people’s hospices, giving a total investment of £24 million. In addition, NHSE supports palliative and end of life care for children and young people through the Children and Young People’s Hospice Grant. NHSE has confirmed that it will be renewing the grant for 2024/25, once again allocating £25 million grant funding for children’s hospices using the same prevalence-based allocation approach as in 2022/23 and 2023/24. This prevalence-based approach ensures funding matches local need.
NHSE’s palliative and end of life care team has recently engaged with 24 ICBs to understand how to better support commissioners and has also reviewed all 42 ICB Joint Forward Plans for their inclusion of palliative and end of life care, with 69% of those plans making a specific mention. Further analysis is ongoing, but the intention is to use this information to help shape and focus support to ICBs.
Palliative and end of life care has been added to the agenda for Regional Quality and Performance meetings. Additionally, NHSE has commissioned the development of a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together all relevant local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of those their local population, including the ability to filter the available information, such as by deprivation or ethnicity, thereby, enabling ICBs to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate her Department has made of the number of closures of community pharmacies in the current Community Pharmacy Contractual Framework period.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Business Services Authority publishes official statistics which includes the number of pharmacies opening and closing in each financial year. The following table shows how many pharmacies opened or closed within the last five years:
Financial Year | Pharmacies opened | Pharmacies closed |
2018/2019 | 220 | 347 |
2019/2020 | 239 | 405 |
2020/2021 | 236 | 451 |
2021/2022 | 308 | 418 |
2022/2023 | 297 | 388 |
Community pharmacies are private businesses that receive funding to provide pharmaceutical services for the National Health Service. The decision to close, divest or consolidate is a commercial decision made by the business owner. The Department is monitoring changes to the market closely. Access remains good, with 80% of people in England living within a 20 minutes’ walk from a local pharmacy, and with twice as many pharmacies in deprived areas.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she plans to increase services offered by community pharmacies.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Pharmacies across England, including in Knowsley, can already choose to deliver a wider range of NHS funded services including for example providing advice on newly prescribed medicines for long term conditions, blood pressure checks, oral contraception consultations and minor illness referrals from GPs, NHS111 and Urgent and Emergency Care. Early in 2024 we will expand the NHS funded service offer in community pharmacy and launch Pharmacy First. The service will enable community pharmacists to manage seven common conditions including the supply of prescription-only medicines without a prescription from a GP. The seven conditions are: sinusitis, sore throat, earache, infected insect bite, impetigo, shingles and uncomplicated urinary tract infections in women.
Asked by: George Howarth (Labour - Knowsley)
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 implications for her Department's policies of trends in the level of demand for pharmacy services during winter 2023-24.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Every year in winter, demand for services in the National Health Service increases and community pharmacies are playing a growing role in supporting the NHS to meet this demand. Pharmacies in England already deliver a wider range of NHS services including advice on newly prescribed medicines for long-term conditions, blood pressure checks, oral contraception consultations and minor illness referrals from general practitioners (GPs), NHS 111 and urgent and emergency care. We are investing in community pharmacy to enable them to support more patients in winter by launching Pharmacy First this year. Pharmacy First will enable community pharmacists to manage seven common conditions including the supply of prescription-only medicines without referring them on to a GP for a prescription