Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have been admitted to hospital for self injecting botox in the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The requested data is not held centrally. NHS England does not routinely collect hospital admissions data specifically related to Botox or self-injected Botox.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease in the last year for which figures are available.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold information in the format requested. The cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention audit provides a count of the number of people with a general practice record of CVD. This information is available publicly at the following link:
https://www.cvdprevent.nhs.uk/
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of ensuring that rare autoimmune rheumatic disease patients have named care coordinators.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are aware there remains unmet need on coordination of care for people with rare diseases and work is underway to improve this.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for working with their local communities to understand the needs of the local populations and make decisions about how best to commission services, including for those with rare autoimmune rheumatic disease.
We are improving coordination of care for all rare diseases as a priority under the UK Rare Diseases Framework. England’s Rare Diseases Action Plans details a range of measures to improve coordination of care, including work against Action 37 on co-ordination of care for multi-system disorders. NHS England is also committed to include the definition of coordination of care in all new and revised services specifications for patients with rare diseases. The National Institute of Health and Care Research has commissioned research to provide the evidence needed to operationalise better co-ordination of care for rare diseases in the National Health Service.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
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 reduce the number of deaths in hospital.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is prioritising patient safety and a learning culture in the National Health Service to prevent harmful events from happening to patients. The NHS Patient Safety Strategy, originally published in 2019, and updated in 2021 and 2023, includes key programmes to support the NHS to improve patient safety continuously and reduce patient harm. Further information on the NHS Patient Safety Strategy is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/the-nhs-patient-safety-strategy/
As part of this, the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework reforms the way providers respond to patient safety incidents, with further information available at the following link:
In addition, the Learn From Patient Safety Events service also enables the NHS to learn from more than three million patient safety incidents reported annually, including through the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools for analysis. Further information on the Learn From Patient Safety Events service is available at the following link:
Other examples of key patient safety initiatives include rollout of Martha’s Rule, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/marthas-rule/
From September 2024 to July 2025, this policy has resulted in changes in treatment for roughly 1,000 patients, with more than 260 patients requiring transfers of care to high dependency or intensive care units, enhanced levels of care, or a tertiary centre. The Government also introduced the statutory medical examiner system from September 2024 which means that medical examiners independently scrutinise every death in England and Wales not referred to a coroner. This is estimated as more than half a million deaths in 12 months. Medical examiners support local learning and improvement by detecting and referring concerns through established local clinical governance processes.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to support the NHS to train more gynaecology specialists.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in our 10-Year Health Plan published on 3 July, over the next three years we will create 1,000 new specialty training posts with a focus on specialties where there is the greatest need. We will set out next steps in due course.
In acknowledgement of doctors’ concerns about jobs and access to training places, the Government made an offer to the British Medical Association’s Resident Doctors Committee to double the previously announced increase in specialty training places in the 10-Year Health Plan to 2,000, bringing 1,000 of these forward to next year, create an alternative training pathway, and take steps to prioritise United Kingdom medical graduates and doctors with significant National Health Service experience for specialty posts.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have received liver transplants in each of the last 3 years in each region.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is the organisation responsible for organ donation in the United Kingdom, they also manage the NHS Organ Donor Register and National Transplant Register.
NHSBT publishes an annual Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Activity Report which gives a comprehensive update about organ donors, transplant waiting lists, and transplant activity for the UK for the latest financial year. Section 8.4 of the report details liver transplant activity, data on transplants by country/National Health Service region of residence, in Table 8.8, and by transplant centre, in Table 8.9. NHSBT Annual Activity reports are available at the following link:
https://www.odt.nhs.uk/statistics-and-reports/annual-activity-report/
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have received cornea transplants aged under 18 in each of the last 3 years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the last three years, there has been a total of 469 finished consultant episodes recorded where there was any procedure of ‘other corneal graft procedure’ for patients aged zero to 17 years old, when accounting for activity in English National Health Service hospitals and English NHS commissioned activity in the private sector. By year there were:
This information has been gathered from the Hospital Episode Statistics dataset, which is published by NHS England.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GP appointments are offered in England each week.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practice appointment data is collected and published monthly by NHS England. This data records appointments that have actually taken place, rather than those offered. As a result, we are unable to ascertain precisely how many appointments are offered to patients, we can, however, report on the number delivered.
In September 2025, 32 million appointments were delivered, which is, on average, approximately eight million appointments delivered in general practice per week.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many people have received cochlear implants aged under 18 in each of the last 3 years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold data on the number of people aged under or over 18 years old who have received cochlear implants in the last three years. However, the Hospital Episode Statistics provide a count of finished consultant episodes where there was any procedure of “cochlear implant”. The following table shows the count of finished consultant episodes where there was any procedure of “cochlear implant” for 2022/23, 2023/24, and 2024/25, broken down by age group:
Age group | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
Zero to 17 year olds | 444 | 455 | 469 |
18 and over | 767 | 923 | 889 |
Unknown | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Total | 1,216 | 1,383 | 1,363 |
This data reflects the number of procedures, as individuals may have multiple admissions for the same procedure within a given period.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many adults have received cochlear implants in each of the last 3 years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold data on the number of people aged under or over 18 years old who have received cochlear implants in the last three years. However, the Hospital Episode Statistics provide a count of finished consultant episodes where there was any procedure of “cochlear implant”. The following table shows the count of finished consultant episodes where there was any procedure of “cochlear implant” for 2022/23, 2023/24, and 2024/25, broken down by age group:
Age group | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
Zero to 17 year olds | 444 | 455 | 469 |
18 and over | 767 | 923 | 889 |
Unknown | 5 | 5 | 5 |
Total | 1,216 | 1,383 | 1,363 |
This data reflects the number of procedures, as individuals may have multiple admissions for the same procedure within a given period.