Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had discussions with social enterprises that employ front line staff on funding to cover lump sum payments.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department has not had recent discussions with social enterprises on funding to cover lump sum payments.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how she plans to distribute the £25 million committed to children’s hospices in 2024-25.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England currently supports palliative and end of life care for children and young people through the Children and Young People’s Hospice Grant. Last year, NHS England confirmed that it will be renewing the funding for 2024/25, once again allocating £25 million of funding for children’s hospices, using the same prevalence-based allocation approach as in 2022/23 and 2023/24. This prevalence-based approach ensures funding matches local need.
The distribution of the 2024/25 funding to children’s hospices will be via integrated care boards (ICBs), in line with the wider move to a devolved National Health Service, in which ICBs are best placed to meet the health and care needs of their local population.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing a long-term strategy for supporting the palliative care needs of children and young people.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
While the National Health Service has always been required to commission appropriate palliative and end of life care services to meet the reasonable needs of the population, palliative care services were added to the list of services an integrated care board (ICB) must commission, promoting a more consistent national approach and supporting commissioners in prioritising palliative and end of life care. To support ICBs in this statutory duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance on palliative and end of life care, and a service specification for children and young people.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had discussions with NHS England on the adequacy of (a) regional planning and (b) accountability for children’s palliative care.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is in ongoing discussions with NHS England about the oversight and accountability of National Health Service palliative and end of life care commissioning.
From April 2024, NHS England will include palliative and end of life care in the list of topics for its regular performance discussions between national and regional leads.
NHS England has commissioned the development of a palliative and end of life care dashboard, which brings together relevant, all-age local data in one place. The dashboard helps commissioners understand the palliative and end of life care needs of those in their local population, including children, enabling integrated care boards to put plans in place to address and track the improvement of health inequalities.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
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 help ensure that the outcomes of applications for funding to cover one off lump sum payments for frontline NHS staff employed by social enterprises are decided by the end of the financial year.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is working closely with NHS England to finalise the outcomes of the applications, and has committed to communicating these directly to the organisations, ahead of the end of the financial year.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate she has made of the number of available medical school places in each of the last 10 years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government controls the number of medical school places that it funds. The Office for Students (OfS) sets the maximum number of funded places for medical degrees, on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Education.
For 2023/24, the maximum number of funded places was set at 7,571, and it has been near this number since 2019. Each provider is allocated a number of these places but may take slightly fewer or more people than their allocated number, for example if exam results are unexpectedly good. For this reason, the target for funded places does not necessarily match actual intakes, though the difference is often not large.
The OfS publishes the number of entrants to medical degrees in England each year. Numbers for 2020 and 2021 are high as a result of the Government’s temporary lifting of the cap on medical school places in England. The following table shows the number of entrants to medicine courses in England, each year from 2014 to 2023:
Year | Entrants |
2014 | 6,000 |
2015 | 5,880 |
2016 | 5,930 |
2017 | 6,095 |
2018 | 6,800 |
2019 | 7,565 |
2020 | 8,405 |
2021 | 8,485 |
2022 | 7,625 |
2023 | 7,655 |
Source: The Office for Students’ Medical and Dental Students Survey, from 2014 to 2023.
Note: 2023 entrants are based on initial figures and may change.
The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan published in June 2023 commits to doubling the number of medical school places, taking the total number of places up to 15,000 a year by 2031/32.
We have accelerated this expansion by allocating 205 additional medical school places for the 2024/25 academic year. The process for allocating 350 additional places for the 2025/26 academic year is underway.
This builds on the expansion of medical school places in England to 7,500 per year - a 25% increase - that the Government completed in 2020 and which delivered five new medical schools.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many junior doctors left the NHS workforce in each of the last five years.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England publish data on the numbers of National Health Service (NHS) staff broken down by grade, who have left active service in NHS trusts and core organisations. This data is drawn from the Electronic Staff Record (ESR), the HR system for the NHS. Data can be found here:
https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/nhs-workforce-statistics
The data includes staff employed by NHS trusts and integrated care boards, but excludes staff directly employed by general practitioner (GP) surgeries, local authorities, and other providers, such as community interest companies and private providers.
The count of leavers includes staff leaving to work in GPs, local authorities, and private providers. It also includes those going on maternity leave, or career breaks. Each year staff move both ways, between NHS trusts and other health providers. This is particularly important to note for junior doctors, as data on leavers will include those moving as part of planned rotations and placements into GPs or other settings.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has had discussions with local authorities on how the targeted housing support interventions announced in the drug strategy housing support grant will be assessed.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of the Government’s 10-year drug strategy, 28 local authorities are receiving up to £53 million in this Spending Review period, from 2022/23 to 2024/25, to further strengthen evidence on what housing support interventions support recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Local authorities have been implementing their services since funding was announced in February 2023, with funding currently confirmed until March 2025. Further information on funding allocation is available at the following link:
Assessing which interventions have improved drug and alcohol treatment as well as housing outcomes for this population, is a key strand of the independent evaluation of drug strategy investment into treatment and recovery, which is due to completed by December 2025.
Further information about the evaluation can be found at the following link:
https://d-sitar.org/evaluations/housing-support-grant-evaluation
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her planned timetable is for the rollout of funding announced in the drug strategy housing support grant.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of the Government’s 10-year drug strategy, 28 local authorities are receiving up to £53 million in this Spending Review period, from 2022/23 to 2024/25, to further strengthen evidence on what housing support interventions support recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. Local authorities have been implementing their services since funding was announced in February 2023, with funding currently confirmed until March 2025. Further information on funding allocation is available at the following link:
Assessing which interventions have improved drug and alcohol treatment as well as housing outcomes for this population, is a key strand of the independent evaluation of drug strategy investment into treatment and recovery, which is due to completed by December 2025.
Further information about the evaluation can be found at the following link:
https://d-sitar.org/evaluations/housing-support-grant-evaluation
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of the recovery support programme in (a) embedding improvements, (b) preventing further deterioration and (c) enabling stabilisation of services for the (i) Norfolk and Waveney, (ii) Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin and (iii) Devon Integrated Care Board.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
A formal rapid evaluation of the Recovery Support Programme’s effectiveness has been jointly commissioned by the Department and NHS England. This is due to be completed in spring 2024.