Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has plans to review NICE’s criteria for reviewing new medicines so that it ensures appropriate access to treatments by people with rare diseases.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department has no plans to review the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) criteria for assessing medicines. NICE is an independent body and is responsible for the methods and processes it uses in the development of its guidance. NICE’s methods and processes for the assessment of drugs have been carefully developed over time through extensive engagement with stakeholders and are internationally respected. NICE continues to keep its procedures under periodic review to ensure that they remain fit for purpose.
All topics, including drugs for rare diseases, are considered through a rigorous topic selection process before formal referral to NICE to ensure that NICE guidance is appropriate and will add value. NICE assesses most significant new drugs through its technology appraisal programme and has been able to recommend a number of drugs licenced for the treatment of rare diseases for routine use on the National Health Service.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
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 the (a) standard and (b) capacity of NHS crisis and inpatient services.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health set out an ambitious plan to improve mental health services up to 2020/21 and includes commitments to invest in mental health crisis and acute care. This includes:
- more than £400 million for crisis resolution and home treatment teams (CRHTTs) to ensure that people across the country are able to access a 24/7 community based crisis response and intensive home treatment as a safe and effective alternative to hospital admission;
- £249 million for liaison mental health services in every acute hospital, ensuring that at least 50% of acute hospitals have dedicated on-site 24 hours/seven days provision; and
- £30 million to provide more places of safety for people who may experience a mental health crisis and to eliminate the use of police cells as place of safety.
NHS England is also leading a programme to introduce standards for acute care services over the next five years, including elimination of inappropriate out of area placements for people requiring acute inpatient admission.
NHS England is consulting until 30 September on the development of the long-term plan for the NHS over the next ten years, which includes mental health as a clinical priority. Further information is available at the following link:
https://www.engage.england.nhs.uk/consultation/developing-the-long-term-plan-for-the-nhs/
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to child and adolescent mental health services for schools and families.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
We are making an additional £1.4 billion available over the course of 2015/16-2020/21. This money will transform services and increase access to specialist mental health services for an additional 70,000 children and young people a year by 2020/21.
Specifically on improving access to mental health support for schools: with the Department for Education, we are setting up new Mental Health Support Teams, as announced in our joint Green Paper. These teams will deliver mental health interventions for those with mild to moderate needs in or close to schools and colleges (and refer those with more severe needs on to specialist services). The Green Paper also announced the piloting of a four week waiting time to improve access to National Health Service mental health services, which we will roll out in a number of trailblazer areas alongside the support teams. The Department for Education is also setting up new training to incentivise schools and colleges to train a Designated Senior Lead for Mental Health to promote a whole-school approach to mental health and work closely with the new Support Teams.
We will also ensure that at least one teacher in every primary and secondary school will receive mental health awareness training to enable school staff to spot common signs of mental health issues, and to help children and young people receive appropriate support.
We have also introduced two waiting time standards for children and young people. The first aims for 95% of children (up to 19 years old) with eating disorders to receive treatment within a week for urgent cases and four weeks for routine cases. The second is that 50% of patients of all ages experiencing a first episode of psychosis receive treatment within two weeks of referral. We are currently exceeding or on track to meet these waiting time standards.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve access to face-to-face talking therapies for people with mental health problems.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
This Government is committed to improving access and waiting time standards for psychological therapies.
As set out in NHS England’s Implementing the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, we aim to deliver increased access to psychological therapies by 2020/21, so that at least 1.5 million people with common mental health conditions access services each year. The aim is for the majority of new services to be integrated with physical healthcare, and as part of this expansion, for 3,000 new mental health therapists will be co-located in primary care.
The Five Year Forward Review for mental health is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/fyfv-mh.pdf
We also continue to exceed performance against our waiting time standards for access to psychological therapies. Latest figures from May 2018 showed that, of those people who completed a course of Improving Access to Psychological Therapies treatment, 89.6% waited less than six weeks to enter treatment and 99.0% waited less than 18 weeks.
The latest recovery rate for psychological therapies in May 2018 was 52.8%, exceeding the 50% target.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Adjournment debate of 17 July 2018 on Access to Orkambi, Official Report, cols 377-386, what steps he is taking to (a) facilitate and (b) participate as appropriate in a meeting between the chief executives of NHS England and of Vertex to discuss patient access to lumacaftor-ivacaftor and other medicines for cystic fibrosis.
Answered by Steve Brine
As was made clear in the Debate on 17 July 2018, Official report, columns 377-386, Ministers are watching this issue very closely. However, it is vital that we go through the right process. It is the responsibility of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS England, to work together with Vertex to secure the best outcome for patients and a price for Orkambi that is fair and responsible.
It is an important principle that the National Health Service must ensure that healthcare services secure the best value for patients, and that is the approach NHS England is rightly taking. It is disappointing that Vertex has chosen to withdraw from NICE’s technology appraisal of its latest cystic fibrosis medicine, Symkevi, and NICE and NHS England wrote to Vertex on 31 August to signal their continued willingness to meet with Vertex to discuss access to its new cystic fibrosis medicines.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
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 6 June 2018 to Question 148619, whether the Public Health England’s Operational Delivery Network Hepatitis C profile tool will be published before the summer recess.
Answered by Steve Brine
Public Health England’s Operational Delivery Network (ODN) Hepatitis C profile tool will be published in late July 2018, after the summer recess, and is intended to support prevention, testing and diagnosis, and treatment activities at ODN level.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
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 6 June 2018 to Question 148619, if he will set a publication date for Public Health England’s Operational Delivery Network Hepatitis C profile tool.
Answered by Steve Brine
Public Health England’s Operational Delivery Network (ODN) Hepatitis C profile tool will be published in late July 2018, after the summer recess, and is intended to support prevention, testing and diagnosis, and treatment activities at ODN level.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of treating people with cystic fibrosis in each of the last five years.
Answered by Steve Brine
No specific estimate has been made, though some data are collected through the NHS Reference Costs data collection, which provides the average unit cost to the NHS of providing defined services to National Health Service patients in England in a given financial year. The following table shows the estimated total cost of treating cystic fibrosis within secondary care in each of the last five years.
Year | Estimated total cost in secondary care (£ million) |
2012-13 | £84.8 |
2013-14 | £102.0 |
2014-15 | £105.6 |
2015-16 | £107.8 |
2016-17 | £105.7 |
Source: NHS Improvement Reference Costs
Note:
For children with cystic fibrosis there are two models for the delivery of care:
- Full care delivered entirely by a specialist cystic fibrosis centre; and
- Shared care delivered by a network cystic fibrosis clinic, which is part of an agreed designated network with a specialist cystic fibrosis centre. The network cystic fibrosis clinic is linked to and led by a specialist cystic fibrosis centre. Named providers for network clinics were collected for the first time in 2012-13.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions his Department has had with representatives of cystic fibrosis charities on the availability of Orkambi on the NHS for people with cystic fibrosis.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) met with the Cystic Fibrosis Trust (CFT) on 7 March 2017 following an adjournment debate in December 2016 on “Implications of the Accelerated Access Review (AAR) for Cystic Fibrosis and other Conditions” to discuss Orkambi. A meeting has also been scheduled between the Prime Minister and the Chief Executive of the CFT, David Ramsden, and the hon. Members for Dudley North (Ian Austin) and Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning), to discuss the availability of Orkambi.
Lord O’Shaughnessy and I wrote to Vertex in April following a Westminster Hall debate, to encourage the company to work with NHS England on a proposal that represents value to the National Health Service and the taxpayer.
Asked by: Ivan Lewis (Independent - Bury South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of NHS England taking a portfolio approach to its evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of cystic fibrosis medicines.
Answered by Steve Brine
The Department has made no assessment. Negotiations between NHS England and Vertex on Orkambi continue, and the final decision on any arrangement lies with NHS England, and not the Government. The Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Health (Lord O’Shaughnessy) and I wrote to Vertex in April following a Westminster Hall debate to encourage the company to work with NHS England on a proposal that represents value to the National Health Service and the taxpayer.