Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to increase the use of hospices in social and community care.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We want a society where every person, their families, and carers, receive high-quality, compassionate care, from diagnosis through to end of life. The Government is determined to shift more healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to ensure that patients and their families receive personalised care in the most appropriate setting, and palliative and end of life care, including hospices, will have a big role to play in that shift.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to assess waiting lists for elective surgery on the basis of average wait times rather than longest possible wait time.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Tackling waiting lists is a key part of our Health Mission and a top priority for the Government. We have committed to achieving the National Health Service’s constitutional standard that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment by the end of this Parliament. Whilst our focus is on achieving this constitutional standard, it is unacceptable that patients are waiting over a year for care. Therefore, the Government will continue to review and treat the patients who have waited the longest for treatment as well as monitoring progress on the 18-week standard. Tackling the longest waits will be a key part of achieving our commitment.
The Department and NHS England use a range of data metrics to assess elective waiting lists. This is supported by the publication of monthly statistics that include the number of incomplete patient pathways and time spent on the waiting list, as well as average wait times, measured as the median wait time for incomplete patient pathways. This monthly publication is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/rtt-waiting-times/rtt-data-2024-25/
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
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 ensure that (a) residents of care homes and (b) the families of those residents in England are aware of mechanisms for reporting abuse.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Mechanisms are in place for residents of care homes and their families to report abuse.
Under the Care Act 2014, in any activity that a local authority undertakes, it should ensure that the individual is, and remains, protected against abuse or neglect.
Section 4 of the Care Act 2014 also places a duty on local authorities to “establish and maintain a service for providing people in its area with information and advice relating to care and support for adults and support for carers.” This service includes information and advice about what to do in cases of neglect or abuse of an adult. Where it is suspected that an individual may be at risk of abuse or neglect, local authorities have a duty to carry out proportionate enquiries.
Quality Matters includes work to improve access to complaints systems and improve the feedback culture in the sector. In July 2018, as part of the initiative, the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman and Healthwatch England published the Single Complaints Statement – a guide for each stage of the complaints process, for adult social care providers and commissioners, people who use services, their families and carers. This sets out what service users, their families and representatives can expect when making a complaint with a simple bulleted guide for each stage of the complaints process. Service providers are encouraged to adopt the single complaints statements into their own complaints policies and highlight them in any information they give to service users, their families and representatives.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent discussions his Ministers have had with the Care Quality Commission on (a) the care home inspection regime and (b) the potential inadequacies of that regime.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
Ministers in the Department meet regularly with senior leaders from the Care Quality Commission to discuss a wide range of issues.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many reports of abuse there have been in care homes in (a) Bury, (b) the North West and (c) England in each of the last five years.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The following table shows the number of allegations of abuse in care home locations received by the Care Quality Commission between 2014 to 2018.
Year received | Number of Notifications | ||
| Bury Local Authority | North West Region | England |
2014 | 99 | 5,741 | 37,060 |
2015 | 122 | 6,948 | 43,064 |
2016 | 164 | 7,856 | 46,227 |
2017 | 176 | 9,304 | 57,738 |
2018 | 182 | 9,936 | 67,590 |
Grand Total | 743 | 39,785 | 251,679 |
This data includes multiple notifications about individual locations.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many care homes have been closed in England as a result of (a) complaints and (b) a Care Quality Commission inspection rating of poor in each of the last five years.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
The following table shows the total number of care homes that have been forcibly closed by the Care Quality Commission (CQC).
| Number of Enforced Closures of Locations by Latest Overall Published Rating* | Total | |||
Year of closure | Not rated | Good | Requires improvement | Inadequate | |
2014 | 42 |
|
|
| 42 |
2015 | 43 | 1 | 3 | 40 | 87 |
2016 | 34 |
| 8 | 59 | 101 |
2017 | 21 | 4 | 12 | 73 | 110 |
2018 | 7 | 5 | 15 | 64 | 91 |
2019 (to date) |
| 3 | 7 | 26 | 36 |
Grand Total | 147 | 13 | 45 | 262 | 467 |
Notes:*The last rating cannot be linked as the cause of the closure.
In addition to these figures a significant number of locations will have voluntarily closed before CQC enforcement action is completed.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
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 ensure the availability of medicines after the UK leaves the EU.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The Government remains committed to leaving the European Union with a deal. However, as a responsible Government, we will continue to prepare to minimise any disruption to the supply of medicines and medical products in a potential ‘no deal’ scenario.
We are continuing to work with trade bodies and other stakeholders to carefully review the implications of the extension to the Article 50 period until 31 October at the latest before sharing further guidance with industry at the earliest opportunity. On 26 April we wrote to suppliers advising that, until further guidance is provided, all no-deal measures, including stockpiles and plans to route away from the short straits, should remain in place but on hold.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
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 tackle shortages of (a) Adalat, (b) Nifedipine and (c) other common medicines.
Answered by Seema Kennedy
The vast majority of medicines are not subject to supply problems and every day over 2 million prescription items are successfully dispensed in England.
Where problems do occur the Department’s Medicines Supply Team has well established procedures to deal with medicine shortages and works closely with all stakeholders to help prevent shortages and to ensure that the risks to patients are minimised when they do arise.
We are aware of ongoing supply issues with the Adalat range of the drug nifedipine due to manufacturing capacity constraints. We have been working closely with all suppliers of generic and other brands of nifedipine to maintain overall supply of this medicine to patients and have provided regular updates about the situation to the National Health Service.
We will continue to work closely with all manufacturers of nifedipine preparations to monitor the overall supply situation to ensure supplies continue to remain available.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to additional funding for children’s palliative care announced in the NHS Long-Term Plan, whether he plans to allocate additional funding to children’s hospices in England in 2019-20.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England committed to increase its investment in children’s palliative care over the next five years by match funding clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) who commit to increase their investment in local children’s palliative and end of life care services.
Subject to CCGs increasing investment, NHS England will match this by up to £7 million a year by 2023/24. This increase is in addition to the Children’s Hospice Grant, which provides an annual contribution of £11 million. NHS England is currently establishing financial reporting systems to monitor the baseline investment of CCGs in children’s palliative and end of life care services. This will enable match funding payments made to CCGs where the investments are increased above the investment baseline in the previous year. As baselining will be ongoing through 2019/20, and therefore match funding will not be available in this year, NHS England will be increasing the children’s hospice grant to £12 million for this period.
With regards to financial sustainability of hospices, these are primarily charity-funded but receive some statutory funding from CCGS for providing local services. The amount of funding varies between CCGs, but on average adult hospices receive approximately 30% of their overall funding from National Health Service sources. CCGs are responsible for determining the level of NHS-funded hospice care locally and they are responsible for ensuring that the services they commission meet the needs of their local population.
Asked by: James Frith (Labour - Bury North)
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 ensure the financial sustainability of charitable hospices.
Answered by Caroline Dinenage
As part of the NHS Long Term Plan, NHS England committed to increase its investment in children’s palliative care over the next five years by match funding clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) who commit to increase their investment in local children’s palliative and end of life care services.
Subject to CCGs increasing investment, NHS England will match this by up to £7 million a year by 2023/24. This increase is in addition to the Children’s Hospice Grant, which provides an annual contribution of £11 million. NHS England is currently establishing financial reporting systems to monitor the baseline investment of CCGs in children’s palliative and end of life care services. This will enable match funding payments made to CCGs where the investments are increased above the investment baseline in the previous year. As baselining will be ongoing through 2019/20, and therefore match funding will not be available in this year, NHS England will be increasing the children’s hospice grant to £12 million for this period.
With regards to financial sustainability of hospices, these are primarily charity-funded but receive some statutory funding from CCGS for providing local services. The amount of funding varies between CCGs, but on average adult hospices receive approximately 30% of their overall funding from National Health Service sources. CCGs are responsible for determining the level of NHS-funded hospice care locally and they are responsible for ensuring that the services they commission meet the needs of their local population.