Asked by: Julia Buckley (Labour - Shrewsbury)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the NHS Ten Year Plan will prioritise action to combat kidney disease to reduce healthcare inequalities.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to building a fairer Britain by tackling the structural inequalities that contribute to poor health, particularly for disadvantaged groups. We are dedicated to ensuring that people live well for longer and spend less time in ill health, regardless of where they are born or their financial circumstances.
Our Health Mission in England will focus on addressing the social determinants of health, with the goal of halving the gap in healthy life expectancy between the richest and poorest regions. We will work across Government to address the root causes of health inequalities, including barriers of access to health and care services. We will prioritise prevention, shift more care into the community, and intervene earlier in life to raise the healthiest generation of children in our history.
The 10-Year Health Plan will ensure a better health service for everyone, regardless of condition or service area. On 21 October 2024, we launched a national conversation on the future of the National Health Service, inviting views from across the country on how to deliver a health service fit for the future. Patients, staff, and organisations, including those with experience of, or expertise in, kidney disease, can make themselves heard by logging onto the online portal, which is available at the following link:
No formal assessment has been made of the potential impact of healthcare inequalities in kidney disease on NHS waiting lists.
We recognise that patients have been let down for too long whilst they wait for the care they need, including for kidney disease. Currently, the overall waiting list stands at 7.64 million patient pathways, with over six million people waiting. The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.
Today, fewer than 60% of patients are being seen within 18 weeks. We will ensure 92% of patients return to waiting no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment within our first term, a standard which has not been met consistently since September 2015.
Tackling waiting lists is a key part of our Health Mission. We will start by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, as the first step in our commitment to ensuring patients are treated within 18 weeks. We will also address the challenges in diagnostic waiting times, providing the number of computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and other tests that are needed to reduce elective waits.
NHS England has established the Renal Services Transformation Programme (RSTP), which aims to reduce unwarranted variation in the quality and accessibility of renal care, to improve outcomes and services for those with kidney disease. NHS England, through the RSTP and regional renal clinical networks, is implementing initiatives to provide better, integrated care, to reduce health inequalities, and to focus on prevention and timely intervention for kidney disease.
Working in collaboration with the NHS RightCare Programme and the renal community, the RSTP has developed a renal toolkit to provide integrated care boards, regional renal clinical networks, and providers with tools, case studies, and principles to support the transformation of services at a local level. The toolkit outlines principles to support better management of patients identified with chronic kidney disease (CKD) throughout their patient journey. The RSTP is working closely with NHS England’s regional renal clinical networks to review this toolkit, to work with local partners to develop transformation programmes that will focus on the early identification and management of kidney disease, and which will seek to reduce the number of patients progressing through the various stages of CKD and reduce the number of patients requiring dialysis. By supporting prevention and early intervention, the need for late-stage treatments will be reduced.
Asked by: Julia Buckley (Labour - Shrewsbury)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department plans to take to help family-run farms with any increased costs associated with the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.
Answered by Daniel Zeichner - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Overall, the Government expects any impact on UK farmers to be modest. The level of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and impact on fertiliser prices is a function of the effective carbon price under the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) for fertiliser producers, after accounting for Free Allowances.
Currently, fertiliser producers have high coverage by Free Allowances. What happens to Free Allowance allocations in the coming years is a matter for the UK ETS Authority.
Asked by: Julia Buckley (Labour - Shrewsbury)
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 impact of removing the exemption of care homes from the Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015 on public health.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We have no current plans to assess the impact of removing this exemption. The Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Alarm (England) Regulations 2015, later amended by the Carbon Monoxide Regulations 2022, are for rented residential premises in England. The regulations exclude a range of settings, including care homes.
Asked by: Julia Buckley (Labour - Shrewsbury)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment she has made of the (a) adequacy of schemes offered by the Government to encourage more people to buy electric vehicles and (b) effectiveness of those schemes in helping the UK reach its net zero targets.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
This Government is committed to the transition to electric vehicles (EV) and is encouraging uptake through a range of taxation incentives and grants.
Drivers of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) will continue to benefit from favourable tax rates, such as generous company car tax incentives, which have been set until March 2030. ZEVs remain exempt from vehicle excise duty (VED) until April 2025, after which they will still have preferential first year rates.
In addition, the Government has announced £120m for next financial year to support the purchase of new electric vans and manufacturing of wheelchair accessible vehicles.
The Government is also committed to accelerating the rollout of charging infrastructure so that everyone, no matter where they live or work, can make the transition to an EV. As of 1 November, there are over 71,000 publicly available charging devices in the UK, alongside 680,000 private chargepoints in England alone, supporting drivers to switch to EVs.
Asked by: Julia Buckley (Labour - Shrewsbury)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of granting a presumptive right to install electric vehicle chargers at their own cost to people living in rented accommodation.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Government already provides support for people living in rented accommodation to install chargepoints, through its Electric Vehicle Chargepoint Grant. This provides up to £350 toward the costs of purchasing and installing an electric vehicle chargepoint. We will continue to review whether further steps are needed.
Asked by: Julia Buckley (Labour - Shrewsbury)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if she will make an assessment of the potential (a) impact of green levies on electricity bills on electric vehicle drivers who charge their vehicles at home and (b) merits of imposing green levies on gas only.
Answered by James Murray - Exchequer Secretary (HM Treasury)
The government keeps all taxes, including those levied through energy bills, under review.