Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 NHS staff working in South Holland and the Deepings constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The health and wellbeing of all National Health Service staff is a top priority. Local employers across the NHS have arrangements in place for supporting staff, including occupational health provision, employee support programmes, and a focus on healthy working environments. At a national level NHS staff have access to the SHOUT helpline for crisis support alongside the Practitioner Health service for more complex mental health and wellbeing support, including trauma and addiction.
As set out in the 10-Year Health Plan, we will roll out staff treatment hubs to ensure all staff have access to high quality occupational health support, including for mental health. To further support this ambition, we will work with the Social Partnership Forum to introduce a new set of staff standards for modern employment, covering issues such as access to healthy meals, support to work healthily and flexibly, and tackling violence, racism, and sexual harassment in the workplace.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the capacity of GP services to meet demand in Lincolnshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practice (GP) capacity is tracked through national datasets using several key metrics, such as the number of appointments offered each month and overall workforce levels. Patient feedback is gathered regularly through annual and monthly surveys. Lincolnshire scored below the national average in the most recent annual survey, but the latest monthly results show performance broadly in line with the national average. There is variation between practices within the integrated care board (ICB), influenced by factors such as operating models, population demographics, recruitment challenges, and access to other health and care services. To address this, the ICB is supporting practices through its local support offer and the national Practice Level Support programme, helping to manage demand and optimise capacity and access. Assessing demand and capacity remains complex, but these proxy metrics suggest Lincolnshire is broadly aligned with the national picture. As part of the national GP pilot, where Lincolnshire is one of 11 sites, we are exploring ways to optimise demand and capacity further.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 adequacy of access to NHS dental services for disabled patients in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards are responsible for assessing the needs of their population and ensuring that the relevant dental services are available.
We recognise that certain groups of patients may find it difficult to access dental care. Community dental services are available to people whose additional needs may mean they are not able to be treated at high street dental practices. Under the Equality Act 2010, health and care organisations, including dental practices, have a legal duty to make reasonable adjustments in their approach and provision to ensure that services are as accessible to disabled patients as they are for everybody else.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 increase the number of community diagnostic hubs in South Holland and the Deepings constituency.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) are delivering additional, digitally connected diagnostic capacity in England, providing patients with a co-ordinated set of tests in the community in as few visits as possible, to enable fast and accurate diagnoses.
There are no CDCs in the South Holland and the Deepings constituency. However, there are three CDCs located within the NHS Lincolnshire Integrated Care Board, including the Grantham CDC in Grantham. CDCs, even if not local to a constituent, will add capacity to the wider integrated care system and will benefit more than just those patients immediately close to them. Diagnostic services can also be accessed across existing acute capacity, such as at Peterborough City Hospital.
CDCs are now delivering additional tests and checks in 170 sites across the country and have delivered over 9.4 million tests, checks, and scans, including large, standard, and hub and spoke models, since July 2024.
The Elective Reform Plan sets out that the Government will deliver additional CDC capacity in 2025/26 by expanding a number of existing CDCs and building up to five new CDCs. This is funded as part of the £600 million of capital investment for diagnostics in 2025/26, which my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer set out in the June 2025 statement.
NHS England is working with local National Health Service systems to identify the most appropriate locations for additional investment, including new CDCs. New CDCs should be positioned in a location which addresses local need and address health inequalities. Details of future sites will be set out in due course. The locations of both new and expanded CDC schemes will be confirmed in due course.
Over the longer term, as set out in our 10-Year Health Plan, we expect more care to be delivered in community settings, and nearer to patients’ home by default, for example through greater use of point of care tests.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on cancer diagnosis wait times in South Holland and the Deepings in the last five years.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department does not hold this data, although published data from NHS England is available from 2022 for the cancer waiting time standards, at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/cancer-waiting-times/
Cancer waiting times data can be broken down by integrated care board or National Health Service trust, however, this data is not available by constituency. The local NHS trusts for the South Holland and the Deepings constituency are North West Anglia, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King's Lynn, and United Lincolnshire Teaching Hospitals.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many of the neighbourhood health centres announced in the autumn budget 2025 will be based in Lincolnshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
At the Autumn Budget, we announced our commitment to deliver 250 Neighbourhood Health Centres (NHCs) through the NHS Neighbourhood Rebuild Programme. This will deliver NHCs through a mixture of refurbishments to expand and improve sites over the next three years and new-build sites opening in the medium term. The first 120 NHCs are due to be operational by 2030 and will be delivered through public private partnerships and public capital.
Nationwide coverage will take time, but we will start in the areas of greatest need where healthy life expectancy is lowest, including rural towns and communities with higher deprivation levels, targeting places where healthy life expectancy is lowest and delivering healthcare closer to home for those that need it the most.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for commissioning, which includes planning, securing, and monitoring, general practice services within their health systems through delegated responsibility from NHS England. Both ICBs and local health systems will be responsible for determining the most appropriate locations for Neighbourhood Health Centres.
We have also launched wave 1 of the National Neighbourhood Health Implementation Programme (NNHIP) in 43 areas across England, including North East Lincolnshire. The NNHIP is supporting systems across the country in driving innovation and integration at a local level to improve the care they provide to their communities.
We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that reflects the specific needs of local populations. While the focus on personalised, coordinated care will be consistent, that will mean the service will look different in rural communities such as Lincolnshire.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 increase the availability of defibrillators in (a) South Holland and the Deepings constituency and (b) Lincolnshire.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Over 110,000 defibrillators are registered in the United Kingdom on The Circuit, the independent automated external defibrillator (AED) database. The Department’s Community AED Fund delivered 3080 new AEDs to local communities between September 2023 and February 2025. The Department has no current plans to fund the purchase of additional AEDs, as local communities are best placed to make decisions about procuring, locating and maintaining AEDs.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will list the organisations his Department has consulted on its upcoming acquired brain injury action plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I attended the UK Acquired Brain Injury Forum’s (UKABIF’s) annual summit in Manchester on 3 November 2025, where I discussed our forthcoming acquired brain injury (ABI) plan with a number of stakeholders, patients with lived experience and healthcare professionals with a specialist interest in ABI.
The Government’s ABI action plan will be published in the first half of 2026. It will be a landmark step in delivering the joined-up approach that people with ABI deserve.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when his Department intends to publish the acquired brain injury action plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
I attended the UK Acquired Brain Injury Forum’s (UKABIF’s) annual summit in Manchester on 3 November 2025, where I discussed our forthcoming acquired brain injury (ABI) plan with a number of stakeholders, patients with lived experience and healthcare professionals with a specialist interest in ABI.
The Government’s ABI action plan will be published in the first half of 2026. It will be a landmark step in delivering the joined-up approach that people with ABI deserve.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
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 integration between NHS services and social care provision in Lincolnshire.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is committed to improving integration between health and social care services nationally and locally. Our vision for neighbourhood health will see local government and the National Health Service working more closely together, with a revitalised role of Health and Wellbeing Boards and reform of the Better Care Fund (BCF).
Through the BCF, approximately £9 billion is being invested in 2025/26 to enable NHS bodies and local authorities to pool budgets and deliver joined-up care. This includes setting shared goals to reduce delayed discharges, avoid unnecessary hospital admissions, and support people to live independently at home.
In Lincolnshire, local Health and Wellbeing Boards are required to agree plans under the BCF framework to provide timely and coordinated support for people with complex needs. These plans prioritise effective discharge from hospital and recovery in the community.