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 help prevent irreversible blindness from glaucoma progression.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Regular sight tests play a crucial role in the early detection of glaucoma, which is often symptomless in the early stages. Free National Health Service sight tests are available for many, including individuals diagnosed with glaucoma or those aged 40 years old and over with a close family member with a history of glaucoma. Patients with suspected glaucoma will be referred for further investigation, any clinically necessary treatment, and ongoing monitoring, which can delay its progression.
NHS England has been testing how IT connectivity between primary and secondary eye care services and the development of a single point of access could improve the referral and triage of patients, reducing the time from referral to treatment. It could also allow for more patients to be managed closer to home, within community optometry. This could benefit all patients with eye care needs, including those with suspected or diagnosed glaucoma.
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 impact of combined cataract and trabecular bypass on glaucoma progression.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The best treatment options for any individual patient will be decided by the treating clinician in discussion with the patient, taking into account the relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidance. NICE guidance on trabecular stent bypass microsurgery for open-angle glaucoma sets out that trabecular bypass surgery can be combined with a cataract operation and has shown its ability to reduce intraocular pressure.
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 hospitals are able to provide aquablation therapy for prostate cancer.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Improving access to cancer treatment and care are key priorities for the Government for all cancer types, including prostate cancer. Aquablation therapy is not used for prostate cancer and so no hospitals will be offering it for prostate cancer.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommends aquablation therapy for treating benign prostatic hyperplasia.
The treatment options available for prostate cancer are dependent on the individual circumstances of the patient, for example whether the cancer is localised. Treatment decisions are made between patients and their clinicians.
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, whether his Department plans to establish a governance framework for (a) monitoring the implementation of and (b) ensuring accountability for the national cancer plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Governance mechanisms for monitoring implementation and ensuring accountability for delivery will be established as part of the development of the National Cancer Plan, which will be published later this year.
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 endometriosis specialist practitioners there are in the NHS.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold information on the number of endometriosis specialists working 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, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of providing free hypnobirthing classes to pregnant women.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The majority of trusts already offer free antenatal education services. A National Health Service online tool is available for women and families to find a class local to them. These classes include support for pregnant women to make a birth plan, considering the different arrangements for labour and birth, and the choices available to them.
The Department is working with NHS England on how to improve the quality of these classes, and to ensure that mothers receive information about their choices so they feel empowered throughout their pregnancy journey, and into motherhood.
Pregnant women can discuss additional hypnobirthing courses with their midwife if this is something they wish to explore.
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 much funding his Department has allocated to support mental health facilities in each of the last three years.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is for local commissioners and providers to decide the level of funding required to support the operation of individual mental health facilities, and this information is not collected centrally.
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 he is taking to support women with postpartum psychosis.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government continues to increase spending on specialist community perinatal mental health services every year. Integrated care boards spent £212 million in 2024/25, which is an increase of £18 million compared to the £194 million spent in 2023/24. In addition, £58 million was spent on mother and baby units in 2023/24.
Mother and baby units are specialist, in-patient units for some women who experience severe mental health difficulties during pregnancy, or after the birth of their child. These units specialise in treating severe mental conditions, including postpartum psychosis. Care is provided by specialist professionals, including perinatal mental health nurses, nursery nurses, perinatal psychiatrists, psychologists, and occupational therapists.
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 Actinic keratoses in each of the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The following table shows the count of finished admission episodes (FAEs) with a recorded primary diagnosis of 'actinic keratoses', for the years 2019/20 to 2023/24, in English National Health Service hospitals:
Year | FAEs |
2019/20 | 13,675 |
2020/21 | 9,278 |
2021/22 | 12,570 |
2022/23 | 13,459 |
2023/24 | 15,346 |
Source: Hospital Episode Statistics, NHS England.
Notes:
The majority of cases of actinic keratoses are treated by a general practitioner or elsewhere in the community, with only a small minority of cases, typically the most serious, requiring hospital admission. The data presented here will, therefore, only represent a small proportion of the total number of cases that were treated.
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 he is taking to improve patient safety in hospitals.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government’s commitment to advancing patient safety in the National Health Service is demonstrated by various measures.
This includes delivery of the NHS Patient Safety Strategy, which is overseen by NHS England. The strategy is now achieving its aims of saving an extra 1,000 lives per year. By April 2025, the strategy’s patient safety improvement programmes had led to over 1,500 neonatal lives saved, over 500 fewer cerebral palsy cases in premature babies, and more than 1,900 deaths prevented overall through medicine safety improvements, including work to reduce long term opioid use. Further information on the NHS Patient Safety Strategy is available at the following link:
The strategy includes other key programmes, such as the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework, the Learn From Patient Safety Events service, the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus, and the Framework for Involving Patients in Patient Safety, that are focussed on improving the NHS’ systems, capability, and capacity to improve safety. Further information on the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework, the Learn From Patient Safety Events service, the NHS Patient Safety Syllabus, and the Framework for Involving Patients in Patient Safety is available, respectively, at the following four links:
https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/patient-safety
Other measures include implementing Martha’s Rule in 143 hospital sites, which has led to hundreds of life-saving interventions and changes to care that have avoided harm, and implementation of scrutiny by medical examiners of all deaths that are not investigated by a coroner, in order to facilitate learning and improvement at a local level.