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 increase access to FibroScan testing for liver fibrosis through Community Diagnostic Centres.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

There are currently plans for 12 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) to offer FibroScan testing, of which six are operational. A further six CDCs plan to offer this service by the end of March 2024.

The CDC core diagnostic tests offer is based on the recommendations in the Sir Mike Richards Review, and decisions on what tests are offered outside of the core requirements of CDCs is taken at a local level based on need.

The Government is working with the National Health Service to support earlier diagnosis of liver disease and identifying patients at risk. This includes plans for upgrading laboratory digital capabilities as part of the £2.3 billion diagnostics transformation programme, to ensure that labs across the country have the capability to offer Intelligent Liver Function Tests, that can effectively and quickly identify patients at high risk of advanced fibrosis.

The Government is also working with the NHS to deliver and consider the result from the pilot of the community liver health check programme, which is due to deliver 22,000 FibroScans per year to communities at particular risk of liver disease. From June 2022 to September 2023, over 26,500 FibroScans were delivered through the pilots, and 8% of people scanned have already been enrolled into liver surveillance programmes. The programme is being delivered across 19 areas by Hepatitis C Operational Delivery Networks to FibroScan patients at high risk of cirrhosis or advanced fibrosis, utilising 40 FibroScan machines.

NHS England is reviewing existing liver diagnosis pathways as part of its wider diagnostic transformation work, to determine what the best approach should be to identify patients at an earlier stage of liver disease, through a liver pathway starting in primary care and involving pathology labs and CDCs. This will include a combination of blood tests and FibroScans.

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 improve the diagnosis of liver disease.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

There are currently plans for 12 community diagnostic centres (CDCs) to offer FibroScan testing, of which six are operational. A further six CDCs plan to offer this service by the end of March 2024.

The CDC core diagnostic tests offer is based on the recommendations in the Sir Mike Richards Review, and decisions on what tests are offered outside of the core requirements of CDCs is taken at a local level based on need.

The Government is working with the National Health Service to support earlier diagnosis of liver disease and identifying patients at risk. This includes plans for upgrading laboratory digital capabilities as part of the £2.3 billion diagnostics transformation programme, to ensure that labs across the country have the capability to offer Intelligent Liver Function Tests, that can effectively and quickly identify patients at high risk of advanced fibrosis.

The Government is also working with the NHS to deliver and consider the result from the pilot of the community liver health check programme, which is due to deliver 22,000 FibroScans per year to communities at particular risk of liver disease. From June 2022 to September 2023, over 26,500 FibroScans were delivered through the pilots, and 8% of people scanned have already been enrolled into liver surveillance programmes. The programme is being delivered across 19 areas by Hepatitis C Operational Delivery Networks to FibroScan patients at high risk of cirrhosis or advanced fibrosis, utilising 40 FibroScan machines.

NHS England is reviewing existing liver diagnosis pathways as part of its wider diagnostic transformation work, to determine what the best approach should be to identify patients at an earlier stage of liver disease, through a liver pathway starting in primary care and involving pathology labs and CDCs. This will include a combination of blood tests and FibroScans.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, for what reason Master of Pharmacy courses are not included in the NHS Learning Support Fund.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Learning Support Fund (LSF) is available broadly to those courses which were eligible for the NHS Bursary prior to the 2017 reforms, and therefore, subjects such as pharmacy are outside of the scope of the LSF arrangements. There are no immediate plans to make changes to the LSF scheme design.

The Government keeps the funding arrangements for all healthcare students under close review. At all times the Government must strike a balance between the level of support students receive, and the need to make best use of public funds to deliver value for money.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will include Masters of Pharmacy courses in the NHS Learning Support Fund.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Learning Support Fund (LSF) is available broadly to those courses which were eligible for the NHS Bursary prior to the 2017 reforms, and therefore, subjects such as pharmacy are outside of the scope of the LSF arrangements. There are no immediate plans to make changes to the LSF scheme design.

The Government keeps the funding arrangements for all healthcare students under close review. At all times the Government must strike a balance between the level of support students receive, and the need to make best use of public funds to deliver value for money.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Government is on target to double dementia funding by 2024/25.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Government is dedicated to supporting research into dementia, and has committed to doubling the funding for dementia research to £160 million per year by the end of 2024/25. The Government’s responsibility for delivering dementia research is shared between the Department of Health and Social Care, with research delivered by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and the Department for Science Innovation and Technology, with research delivered via UK Research and Innovation.

In 2022/23, the most recent year we have data for, we estimate that total Government spend on dementia research was £96.9 million. Spend is dependent on the number and quality of applications received, as well as the volume of research that requires infrastructure support, therefore research spend can only be calculated retrospectively after the end of the financial year.

The Government is making significant progress towards meeting the commitment and has instigated momentous new programmes of work, for instance investing almost £50 million over five years into the NIHR’s Dementia Translational Research Collaboration Trial Network, which will expand the United Kingdom’s early phase clinical trial capabilities in dementia, speeding up the development of new treatments. A new Clinical Trials Delivery Accelerator focused on dementia was also announced in the Autumn Statement 2023, with up to £20 million of funding to help innovation reach National Health Service patients even faster. Many new initiatives and research projects will begin to spend in 2024/25.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how the additional £95 million investment in dementia care has been allocated.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission was launched in August 2022 with £95 million of Government funding. There is now more than £120 million of committed funding to the mission, which will be invested into three key pillars. The first pillar centres on biomarkers and experimental medicine, and will receive £50 million of the funding for the mission, with the intention of securing match funding from industry partners. As part of this pillar, Innovate UK launched a Small Business Research Initiative competition, with the aim of accelerating innovations in clinical biomarker tools and technologies for dementia, where organisations could apply for a share of £6 million of funding out of the allocated £50 million. These technologies will enable the discovery, validation, and implementation of a suite of decision-enabling biomarkers to help transform clinical trials and precision therapies. The competition closed on 4 September 2023, and the recipients awarded a portion of the £6 million will be announced soon.

The second pillar will focus on clinical trial infrastructure and innovation, with two recently announced initiatives to support its delivery. The first of these initiatives is the National Institute for Health and Care Research’s Dementia-Translational Research Collaboration Trials Network, with almost £50 million of funding over five years. This will expand the United Kingdom’s early phase clinical trial capabilities for dementia, speeding up the development of new treatments. The second initiative is the Clinical Trials Delivery Accelerator, focused on dementia, also named the Dementia Accelerator. This was announced in the Autumn Statement 2023, in response to Lord O’Shaughnessy’s independent review into commercial clinical trials in the UK, with up to £20 million of additional funding.

The third pillar will be focused on end-to-end implementation, specifically on aligning translational research, clinical practice, and regulatory frameworks to prepare health-systems for new dementia medicines. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, NHS England, the Department, the devolved administrations, and the Dame Barbara Windsor Dementia Mission are already working closely together to plan for the implementation of new dementia medicines, should they gain approval in the UK.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if he will make an assessment of trends in the number of technical issues in relation to home office applications since January 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Increasingly since 2023, applications to remain in the United Kingdom have been processed on the new caseworking system, Atlas.

It is a complex system that has many integrated services such as security checking, sending notifications to applicants, triggering the production of BRP cards or creation of digital status. Whilst there have been some issues encountered as Atlas has been developed, no systemic issues have been identified that have caused concerns to be raised with the third-party IT suppliers helping develop and support Atlas.

Most technical issues are resolved within days.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what the average time taken was to resolve technical issues in relation to processing home office applications in each month in 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Increasingly since 2023, applications to remain in the United Kingdom have been processed on the new caseworking system, Atlas.

It is a complex system that has many integrated services such as security checking, sending notifications to applicants, triggering the production of BRP cards or creation of digital status. Whilst there have been some issues encountered as Atlas has been developed, no systemic issues have been identified that have caused concerns to be raised with the third-party IT suppliers helping develop and support Atlas.

Most technical issues are resolved within days.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether his Department has raised concerns with third-party providers on technical issues impacting claims since January 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Increasingly since 2023, applications to remain in the United Kingdom have been processed on the new caseworking system, Atlas.

It is a complex system that has many integrated services such as security checking, sending notifications to applicants, triggering the production of BRP cards or creation of digital status. Whilst there have been some issues encountered as Atlas has been developed, no systemic issues have been identified that have caused concerns to be raised with the third-party IT suppliers helping develop and support Atlas.

Most technical issues are resolved within days.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to tackle technical issues in relation to home office applications.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Increasingly since 2023, applications to remain in the United Kingdom have been processed on the new caseworking system, Atlas.

It is a complex system that has many integrated services such as security checking, sending notifications to applicants, triggering the production of BRP cards or creation of digital status. Whilst there have been some issues encountered as Atlas has been developed, no systemic issues have been identified that have caused concerns to be raised with the third-party IT suppliers helping develop and support Atlas.

Most technical issues are resolved within days.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what is the cause of recent technical issues delaying home office applications.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Increasingly since 2023, applications to remain in the United Kingdom have been processed on the new caseworking system, Atlas.

It is a complex system that has many integrated services such as security checking, sending notifications to applicants, triggering the production of BRP cards or creation of digital status. Whilst there have been some issues encountered as Atlas has been developed, no systemic issues have been identified that have caused concerns to be raised with the third-party IT suppliers helping develop and support Atlas.

Most technical issues are resolved within days.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many people are awaiting decisions on applications to the Home Office as a result of technical issues in each month since January 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The exact number of people awaiting decisions on applications to the Home Office as a result of technical issues in each month since January 2023 is not information currently held in a reportable format.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, in each quarter since the Windrush Compensation scheme was launched, how many people who received an award applied (a) fewer than three months, (b) three to six months, (c) six to 12 months and (d) more than a year before the award.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

The Windrush Compensation Scheme’s priority is to ensure people receive the maximum compensation as quickly as possible.

The time taken to allocate a claim for a substantive casework consideration has been reduced from 18 months to under 4 months. The 4-month period includes all essential eligibility checks, together with a Preliminary Assessment to make an initial payment of £10,000 wherever possible.

Information on the time taken from a claim being received to a compensation payment is not published.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what his Department's policy is on informing applicants if the time taken to process their application is longer than the published service standard as a result of technical issues.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

Where there is a technical issue which prevents caseworkers from taking action on a case, the department will seek to address these as quickly as possible and resolve these so the case can be completed within its service standard. Where the technical issue may cause the case to go out of service standard, caseworking teams will write to the customer to inform them of the delay and keep them informed of progress.

The latest published statistics which includes data on performance against Service Level Agreement for Standard, Priority and Super Priority visas up to the end of Q3 2023 can be found in this link (Data tab VSI_02): https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visas-and-citizenship-data-q3-2023.

Q4 2023 stats are due to be published shortly.

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many excess winter deaths there were in each month from November 2023 to February 2024.

Answered by John Glen - Paymaster General and Minister for the Cabinet Office

The information requested falls under the remit of the UK Statistics Authority.

A response to the Hon lady’s Parliamentary Question of 19th February is attached.

Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many applications for biometric residence permits were delayed as a result of technical issues in each month since January 2023.

Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)

At the point a decision is made to grant permission to remain, a BRP is automatically requested by the caseworking system and data is sent to the DVLA for the BRP to be produced. Any automatic requests that become “stuck” when sent to DVLA are targeted and proactive reporting is being developed to identify such cases earlier.

During 2023, DVLA produced 99.6% of BRPs within 24 hours of this automatic request process and 100% within 48 hours.

Diversity of London

Jagtar Singh Johal

Short-term medical evacuation of children from Gaza

Scientific hearing on animal experiments

Reductions in railway funding

Journalists in Gaza

Two child benefit cap

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale) (added 21 Nov 2022) 1 of 4 (25.0%) Kate

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: Conservative, Amber Valley) David Mundell MP (Conservative, Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale ) Kate

Found: Q23 Kate Osamor: I am now going to ask you some questions on women and girls.

Found: Asylum: Housing 15 Nov 2023 | 651 Asked by: Kate Osamor To ask the Secretary of State for the

In recent years the fragility of civil society has become apparent as political turbulence - for example in Afghanistan and South Sudan - and authoritarian repression have put pressure on civic organisations and structures.

Following the Committee’s recent evidence session on the humanitarian impact of the recent conflict in Gaza, the follow-up session focused on the current healthcare situation in Gaza and the impact of the UK Government’s response on healthcare in that region.