Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 8 May 2025 to Question 49250 on Plants: Disease Control, what assessment he has made of the the potential impact of the UPOV 1991 convention on small holder and subsistence farmers globally?.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Signatories to the 1991 UPOV convention are part of a global plant variety protection system. UPOV’s mission is to encourage the development of new plant varieties for the benefit of society. The assurance that intellectual property will be respected encourages plant breeders to invest in new varieties, critical for all in the face of climate change and food security.
Requirements under UPOV91 apply to new varieties and not existing traditional varieties. The protection of new varieties is voluntary and is a decision made by the plant breeder. To become a member, regulations must align to UPOV91, but there is some degree of flexibility in how national policies are implemented, allowing for local needs to be reflected.
Furthermore, Article 15(2) of the convention contains an optional exception to the Breeder’s Right, allowing farmers to use seed collected from their own crops for their own use with enforcement via domestic legislation.
The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, Department for Business & Trade, and Defra are working together to find a balance between protecting plant breeders’ rights, the need for smallholder farmers to have access to better seed varieties, and the sovereignty of informal seed systems, upon which many smallholder and subsistence farmers rely.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of how many and what proportion of patients aged over 75 presenting at A&E in England were screened for delirium in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not available centrally.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate he has made of the (a) the number and (b) the percentage of people over 60 presenting at A&E who waited over 12 hours to be (a) transferred, (b) admitted or (c) discharged in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publishes data on the number of accident and emergency attendances and admissions by age. Data is also published on 12-hour accident and emergency attendances, although this is not available by age.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of how many and what proportion of patients aged over 75 presenting at A&E in England were screened to assess their risk of falling in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not available centrally.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of how many and what proportion of patients aged over 75 presenting at A&E in England were screened for general frailty in the last 12 months.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not available centrally.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, with reference to her Department's publication entitled Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working Green Paper, published in March 2025, how the £1 billion employment, health and skills support package will be spent.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
We are delivering the biggest investment in support for disabled people and those with health conditions in at least a generation. Our Pathways to Work Guarantee will provide work, health and skills support for disabled people and those with health conditions claiming out of work benefits.
We are increasing funding each year up to £1billion a year by the end of the scorecard. This includes additional funding in 2026/27 to ensure that those affected by benefit changes in England, Scotland and Wales will be offered support with their work, health and skills needs. We anticipate this support will include: access to a conversation about needs, goals and aspirations from one of our 1,000 dedicated Pathways to Work advisors; an offer of one-to-one follow-on support; and help to access additional work, health and skills support through dedicated programmes.
As the Green Paper notes, we are keen to engage widely on the longer-term design of the Pathways to Work guarantee and the components needed to deliver it. To get this right, we are seeking input from a wide range of stakeholders including devolved governments, local health systems, local government and Mayoral Strategic Authorities, private and voluntary sector providers, employers and potential users. We will confirm further details in due course after we have completed our consultation process.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make the eligibility criteria for the holiday activities and food programme the same as that for free school meals.
Answered by Stephen Morgan - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
I refer my hon. Friend, the Member for Liverpool West Derby, to the answer of 13 June 2025 to Question 57800.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve diabetes (a) prevention, (b) care and (c) treatment.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Preventing diabetes is a complex task, and requires multi-faceted action. Prevention involves collaboration in order to tackle the underlying issues such obesity, poor diets, and lifestyle issues. We have several programmes in place to help reduce the prevalence of type 2 diabetes, such as the NHS Health Check, England’s flagship cardiovascular disease programme for those aged 40 to 74 years old, which aims to identify people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes as well as heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, and some cases of dementia, in order to signpost them to behavioural support such as weight management and clinical treatment if needed.
Furthermore, those identified of being at risk of developing type 2 diabetes can be referred to the Healthier You NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme, a nine-month programme that supports people at risk of developing type 2 diabetes to reduce their risk through changing their behavior. The programme is highly effective, cutting the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 37% for people completing the programme, compared to those who do not attend.
For those young adults, those aged 18 years old and over, who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and who are overweight or obese, the NHS Type 2 Diabetes Path to Remission Programme is also available. The programme supports individuals to lose weight, improve their blood sugar levels, reduce diabetes-related medication, and put their diabetes into remission. 32% of patients who completed this programme had put their type 2 diabetes into remission following participation. Further information on the programme is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/diabetes/treatment-care/diabetes-remission/
For patients with established diabetes, NHS England achieved their long-term plan objective that 20% of all type 1 diabetes patients are in receipt of flash glucose monitoring as of April 2021. Progress continues to be made for patients with type 1 diabetes, with over 65% of people currently using flash glucose monitoring to help manage their condition. NHS England can confirm that over 200,000 eligible people living with diabetes benefit from real-time continuous glucose monitoring.
Furthermore, following the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) recommendations on access to hybrid closed loop (HCL) technology last year, NICE and NHS England agreed on a phased implementation period for HCL over five-years, with roll-out commencing in April 2024.
All adults with diabetes are recommended, as prescribed by NICE, to enroll in the eight annual health checks, which include: blood sugars (HbA1c); blood pressure; cholesterol; foot examination; kidney function; urinary albumin; body mass index; and smoking. Adherence to these checks have been associated with reduced emergency admissions, amputations, retinopathy, and mortality. The proportion of people with type 1 diabetes who are receiving all eight care processes had recovered back to 43.3% in 2023/24 and 62.3% for type 2 diabetes, compared to 27% and 37%, respectively, in 2020/21.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology:
To ask the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of establishing a regulator for artificial intelligence.
Answered by Feryal Clark - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The vast majority of AI systems should be regulated at point of use and our expert regulators are best placed to do this. In response to the AI Action Plan, the Government committed to identifying capability needs for regulators to mitigate AI risks and drive growth.
The most advanced AI systems pose distinct opportunities and risks, and the Government is therefore developing legislative proposals to allow us to safely and securely realise the benefits of these systems. We are refining our proposals and will launch a public consultation in due course.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool West Derby)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the the amount of money that has been paid to private clinics for delivering NHS cataract surgery in each of the last six years; and how much of the amount identified represented profit for the companies involved.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Independent providers play an important role supporting the National Health Service to deliver eyecare services, ensuring patients receive the treatment and care they need.
The data is not held in the format requested.