Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
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 ensure that people who are in contact with drug treatment services are tested for hepatitis C.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Local authorities are responsible for assessing local needs and commissioning drug prevention, treatment and harm reduction services to meet these needs. This includes making sure people in this high-risk population are screened for hepatitis C virus and identified for treatment when they access these services.
Public Health England (PHE) provides a range of drug and alcohol treatment data to local authorities which monitors national and local activity in drug treatment settings and can inform local commissioning of services. This includes the number of people in drug treatment who have been tested for hepatitis C.
NHS England and NHS Improvement have an Elimination Programme Partnership with the Pharmaceutical Industry and work closely with Gilead Sciences, who have hepatitis C Testing projects with the six largest groups of National Health Service and independent sector treatment providers in England covering approximately 95% of the available addiction services. Their plan is that ‘everybody tests, and everybody is tested’; all staff can carry out tests and they target 100% of their population. Those in contact with drug treatment services in secure and detained settings are engaged through reception in a programme of ‘opt out’ blood borne virus testing covering hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus. Those already within the prison are targeted through a rolling programme of ‘whole population’ testing.
Local authorities are also responsible for commissioning needle and syringe programmes in their areas. The number of needle and syringe programmes in England is not recorded centrally.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many needle and syringe distribution points there are in England.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Local authorities are responsible for assessing local needs and commissioning drug prevention, treatment and harm reduction services to meet these needs. This includes making sure people in this high-risk population are screened for hepatitis C virus and identified for treatment when they access these services.
Public Health England (PHE) provides a range of drug and alcohol treatment data to local authorities which monitors national and local activity in drug treatment settings and can inform local commissioning of services. This includes the number of people in drug treatment who have been tested for hepatitis C.
NHS England and NHS Improvement have an Elimination Programme Partnership with the Pharmaceutical Industry and work closely with Gilead Sciences, who have hepatitis C Testing projects with the six largest groups of National Health Service and independent sector treatment providers in England covering approximately 95% of the available addiction services. Their plan is that ‘everybody tests, and everybody is tested’; all staff can carry out tests and they target 100% of their population. Those in contact with drug treatment services in secure and detained settings are engaged through reception in a programme of ‘opt out’ blood borne virus testing covering hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus. Those already within the prison are targeted through a rolling programme of ‘whole population’ testing.
Local authorities are also responsible for commissioning needle and syringe programmes in their areas. The number of needle and syringe programmes in England is not recorded centrally.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of Government drugs policy in reducing the rate of new hepatitis C infections.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Local authorities are responsible for assessing local needs and commissioning drug prevention, treatment and harm reduction services to meet these needs. This includes making sure people in this high-risk population are screened for hepatitis C virus and identified for treatment when they access these services.
Public Health England (PHE) provides a range of drug and alcohol treatment data to local authorities which monitors national and local activity in drug treatment settings and can inform local commissioning of services. This includes the number of people in drug treatment who have been tested for hepatitis C.
NHS England and NHS Improvement have an Elimination Programme Partnership with the Pharmaceutical Industry and work closely with Gilead Sciences, who have hepatitis C Testing projects with the six largest groups of National Health Service and independent sector treatment providers in England covering approximately 95% of the available addiction services. Their plan is that ‘everybody tests, and everybody is tested’; all staff can carry out tests and they target 100% of their population. Those in contact with drug treatment services in secure and detained settings are engaged through reception in a programme of ‘opt out’ blood borne virus testing covering hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human immunodeficiency virus. Those already within the prison are targeted through a rolling programme of ‘whole population’ testing.
Local authorities are also responsible for commissioning needle and syringe programmes in their areas. The number of needle and syringe programmes in England is not recorded centrally.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people were treated for hepatitis C in England in the financial year 2018-19.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Public Health England publishes information on the numbers of individual’s accessing hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment in their annual hepatitis C reports.
Latest available data for 2017/18 financial year show that 11,557 people were reported to have accessed HCV treatment in England. This can be viewed at the following link:
Data for the 2018/19 financial year for England will be published in 2020.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
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 ensure people who are in contact with drug treatment services are tested for hepatitis C.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
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 ensure people who are in contact with drug treatment services are tested for hepatitis C.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people were treated for hepatitis C in England in the financial year 2018-19.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many mental health staff have been trained in issues relating to older adults since the 2016 Five Year Forward View targets were set.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
This information is not held in the format requested as most training for mental health staff relates to a range of ages and not just older adults.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 12 of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that all acute hospitals will have mental health liaison teams for all age groups by 2020-21.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
Between 2016 and 2018, NHS England has awarded transformation funding for liaison mental health services to 71 hospital sites to achieve the ‘core 24’ service standard as set out in the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health.
To track progress, NHS England has commissioned the annual survey of liaison psychiatry, which took a snapshot of progress as at June 2018. The survey is nearly complete and results are expected to be published by NHS England in the coming weeks and are expected to demonstrate positive progress. The survey has been re-commissioned to take place again in 2019.
The NHS Long Term Plan confirmed continued further investment in liaison mental health services, with an expectation that not only would all hospitals have a liaison mental health service, but 70% will be achieving the ‘core 24’ service level by 2023/24. NHS England and NHS Improvement are currently inviting applications from sustainability and transformation partnerships for the second wave of national funding.
Asked by: Jeff Smith (Labour - Manchester, Withington)
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 achieve the target in the NHS Long Term Plan of recruiting 40,000 extra nurses in the next five years.
Answered by Stephen Hammond
The interim People Plan published on 3 June 2019 sets out some of the steps needed to ensure the National Health Service have the staff they need to deliver high quality care, including growing our nursing workforce by 40,000 in the next five years.
The interim People Plan commits to providing funding for an additional 5,000 clinical placements for pre-registration nurse training places each year, as well as reducing attrition from training courses and expanding the international recruitment of nurses. To support this commitment NHS Improvement and NHS England are currently delivering a rapid clinical placement expansion programme, working with NHS trust directors of nursing to provide targeted support and resource to increase placement capacity for the September 2019 student intake. NHS Improvement and NHS England have also committed to undertake a comprehensive review of clinical placement activity to increase expansion and student intakes in future years.
The interim People Plan stresses the importance of improving the retention of our existing nursing workforce. To that effect NHS Improvement and NHS Employers have been working in partnership to deliver a national programme to support NHS trusts improve the retention of their nursing and clinical workforce focusing on key issues such as flexible working, development and career planning.
The interim People Plan also outlines the need to support more nurses to return to practice. NHS Improvement has committed to launch a new return to practice campaign, alongside a new marketing campaign, to highlight the opportunities and support available.
A full People Plan will be published soon after the conclusion of the Spending Review when there is further clarity on NHS education and training budgets.