Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 13 June 2016 to Question 39606, on surrogacy law and lone parents, what progress he has made on plans to bring forward legislative proposals to give single parents with children born through surrogacy the same rights as couples.
Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford
The Government is developing plans to introduce a Remedial Order to Parliament to address the incompatibility in the Human Fertility and Embryology Act. The Remedial Order would allow single people to apply for parental orders, which transfers legal parenthood in surrogacy arrangements.
Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent representations he has received on the future funding of research into mesothelioma.
Answered by George Freeman
The Government agrees that more mesothelioma research is needed and has taken measures to stimulate an increase in the level of research activity.
Patients, carers, clinicians and funders have worked in partnership to identify what the priorities in research are. Following a survey and a workshop, the top 10 mesothelioma research priorities were announced in December 2014. The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) published a final report from the Priority Setting Partnership in July 2015. In advance of the identification of research questions by this partnership, the NIHR highlighted to the research community that it wanted to encourage research applications in mesothelioma.
The NIHR subsequently invited researchers to apply for mesothelioma research funding, in particular to address the research questions identified through the partnership. Eight NIHR programmes participated in this themed call. Fifteen individual applications were received, of which two have been approved for funding.
In addition, the NIHR Research Design Service continues to be able to help prospective applicants develop competitive research proposals. This service is well-established and has
10 regional bases across England. It supports researchers to develop and design high-quality proposals for submission to NIHR itself and also to other national, peer-reviewed funding competitions for applied health or social care research.
The National Cancer Research Institute is facilitating ongoing dialogue between relevant research funders on the topic of mesothelioma, to discuss what the barriers to research are and what is needed to stimulate research in the field.
The Chancellor’s Budget Report committed £5 million of LIBOR fines over the next four years for the National Mesothelioma Centre.
The Department has received recent representations relating to funding of mesothelioma research from the Asbestos Victims Support Groups’ Forum UK and from several hon. Members on behalf of constituents.
Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to the Answer of 6 May 2014 to Question 196742, what progress his Department has made on assessing the effectiveness of existing arrangements for reporting complications relating to transvaginal mesh implants; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by George Freeman
The working group on vaginal tapes and mesh is now finalising its interim recommendations which NHS England expects to publish in November 2015, subject to its internal governance processes.
However in the meantime the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has unified and simplified reporting under the Yellowcard reporting brand- All reporting under one page, promoted Yellow card reporting at conferences to increase awareness e.g. RCN Congress, NICE Annual Conference; created the role of Medical Device Safety Officers in conjunction with NHS England to promote local reporting and learning.
As a result we have seen an increase in Member of Public reports relating to transvaginal mesh of 350% over 2014 so far (Table 2).
The data below is taken from the Adverse Incident Tracking System
Table 1: Adverse events reported to MHRA by health professionals concerning vaginal tape and mesh implants are as follows:
Vaginal tapes for stress urinary incontinence 64/25 | Vaginal mesh for pelvic organ prolapse 64/25 | Vaginal mesh for unknown1 indication | |
2011 | 3 | 1 | 0 |
2012 | 23 | 31 | 2 |
2013 | 27 | 20 | 0 |
2014 | 87 | 47 | 1 |
Up to September 2015 | 50 | 48 | 4 |
1 The reporter did not provide enough information on what type of mesh it was. | |||
Table 2: Adverse events reported to MHRA by patients/members of the public concerning vaginal tape and mesh implants are as follows:
Vaginal tapes for stress urinary incontinence | Vaginal mesh for pelvic organ prolapse | Vaginal mesh for unknown1 indication | |
2011 | 33 | 7 | 3 |
2012 | 26 | 2 | 0 |
2013 | 30 | 10 | 3 |
2014 | 22 | 3 | 0 |
Up to September 2015 | 68 | 17 | 6 |
1 The reporter did not provide enough information on what type of mesh it was. | |||
Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Written Statement of 17 July 2015, on the Cap on Care Costs, Official Report, House of Lords, HLWS135, what progress has been made in consulting on the distribution of £25 million allocated to ease transition to a reformed system of support for individuals affected by NHS-supplied blood or blood products contaminated with either or both of the HIV or hepatitis C viruses.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The Department is considering wider reform of financial assistance and other support for those affected with HIV and/or hepatitis C by infected NHS-supplied blood or blood products. We are doing this within the context of the spending review and in a way that is sustainable for the future.
In order to help develop the shape and structure of any new scheme, we plan to consult on scheme reform before the end of the year.
The £25 million was announced by the Prime Minister in March 2015, to support transition to a reformed scheme. We do not intend to use this for the administrative costs that might be associated with reforming the existing schemes, but expect to announce our plans for that money once we have a better understanding of what wider scheme reform might comprise following the outcomes of the consultation.