Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will confirm whether (a) Simon Blagden declared his relationship with Larkspur International to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) before his appointment to its advisory board, (b) UKHSA vetted Larkspur International before his appointment and (c) he supplied UKHSA with a list of Larkspur's clients.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Simon Blagden did not make a declaration of his relationship with Larkspur International to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) at the time of his appointment as he did not assess there to be any potential conflict of interest. This was compliant with the declaration policy in place. He did declare political donations as required and no conflict of interest was identified through the standard appointments process which precluded his appointment to the UKHSA Advisory Board.
Simon Blagden is an unpaid, associate non-Executive member of the Advisory Board, appointed by the Board. A review of the Conflicts of Interest policy was undertaken by the Government Internal Audit Agency in 2022 and did not raise any concerns with Mr Blagden’s declarations. UKHSA has since chosen to adopt a more stringent policy than the Government standard, requiring declaration of all interests whether they present a potential conflict or not. Under this new policy Mr Blagden has formally declared his relationship with Larkspur International.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which spending programmes their Department devolves for administration to (a) local government in England and (b) other local spending bodies; and what the budget is of each such programme for each year for which budgets are agreed.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
A table is attached showing the budgets for grant schemes issued to local government in England by the Department in the form of grants under the Local Government Act 2003 for the financial years 2023/24, 2022/23 and 2021/22. This includes schemes managed by NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will (a) list the spending programmes his Department devolves for administration to local government in England and other local spending bodies and (b) specify the value for each programme for every year for which budgets are agreed.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The following table shows spending on programmes issued to local government in England by the Department in 2020/21 in the form of grants under the Local Government Act 2003.
Local authority funding by scheme | 2020/21 actual expenditure £ ’000s |
Infection Control | 1,146,000 |
Workforce Capacity Fund | 120,000 |
Out of Hours Hospital Care Model for People experiencing Homelessness | 2,549 |
West Midlands Engine | 2,300 |
Learning Disabilities and Autism Community Discharge | 20,000 |
PrEP - HIV drug treatment | 11,222 |
LASSL - local reform and community voices grant, social care in prisons grant and war pensions schemes disregard grant | 57,360 |
Contain Outbreak Management Fund | 1,717,092 |
Test and Trace Business Support to Local authorities | 3,000 |
Test and Trace Isolation Support Payments | 144,743 |
Local Authority Practical Support (for those self-isolating) | 12,900 |
Project Eagle - surge testing support | 3,094 |
Rapid Testing | 149,119 |
Community Testing | 126,615 |
Expenditure data for 2021/22 is not yet available. Spending plans for 2022/23 and beyond are currently being finalised.
This information refers to core Departmental expenditure and does not include spending devolved to local authorities by Departmental arm’s length bodies or spending devolved to local National Health Service bodies via NHS England. The Local Authority Public Health Grant is recorded separately as in 2020/21, this was paid to upper-tier local authorities by the former Public Health England (PHE). The value of the Grant paid to local authorities by PHE in 2020/21 was £3.279 billion. With effect from 1 October 2021, the Department has assumed responsibility for this Grant.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will provide written instructions to NHS Birmingham and Solihull Clinical Commissioning Group requiring them (a) to liaise with hon. Members in the planning of community vaccinations and (b) to provide hon. Members with at least seven days notice of planned community vaccination sessions.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
There are no plans to do so. Whilst it is encouraged that clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) do liaise with local leaders and hon. Members, CCGs are autonomous organisations. As such, there is no formal guidance on the level of interaction CCGs should have with hon. Members and this should be discussed at a local level.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to publish statistics on covid-19 vaccinations at constituency level.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
NHS England publishes weekly data for vaccinations in England by constituency, which is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-vaccinations/
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
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 address the persistent shortages of Registered Nurses in Birmingham’s hospitals identified by the Care Quality Commission in December 2020.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Individual National Health Service employers deliver their own recruitment policies to meet their local need. However, NHS England and NHS Improvement are continuing to work closely with the trusts to ensure that they have appropriate support in place to address the issues identified and that they make sufficient progress.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) policies and (b) grant and funding programmes his Department has introduced to provide support to individuals and organisations in response to the covid-19 outbreak; and what funding has been allocated to each of those programmes in the 2020-21 financial year.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
As part of the 2020 Spending Review, HM Treasury announced that for 2020-21 agreed funding includes; £52 billion for frontline health services to tackle the pandemic including £22 billion for the Test and Trace programme; over £15 billion for the procurement of personal protective equipment; and £2.7 billion to support the development and procurement of vaccines. This also included £3 billion for a package of additional capacity initiatives to support the National Health Service through the winter, including keeping the Nightingale hospitals capacity available, accessing increased capacity from independent sector providers and supporting increased safe discharge of patients from NHS hospitals.
Additionally, we have implemented a temporary NHS finance regime for the first half of the year that ensured every penny spent in NHS systems was fully reimbursed and provided approximately £2.7 billion extra funding to cover the second half of this financial year, to support NHS organisations to manage ongoing COVID-19 pressures and resume routine activity. We have provided up to £1.46 billion for infection control and other grants, funding predominantly given to local authorities to help cover the costs of implementing measures to reduce transmission. This was first introduced in May 2020 and was then extended to March 2021.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans he has to use the 11,300 community pharmacies in England to administer the Oxford/AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine at scale.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
From 1 February 2021, 130 community pharmacies have started to offer the COVID-19 vaccination service, including the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, with more pharmacies joining the service over the coming weeks. Some pharmacists and members of their team have also been working with general practitioners to deliver the vaccine in many areas of the country.
NHS England and NHS Improvement are working with all the national pharmacy organisations on plans to ensure that community pharmacies are used to optimal effect in the COVID-19 vaccination programme, starting with the sites that can do this at scale.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has plans to reorganise NHS trusts in the Black Country.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
Since the establishment of the sustainability and transformation partnership there has been much greater collaboration between organisations in the Black Country and West Birmingham.
There is an ambition to work much more closely together to reduce the variance in services, standardise clinical practices and take the best part of each other’s improvement programmes which will ultimately improve outcomes for local people.
Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust and Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust have therefore indicated that they are looking to progress a strategic collaboration arrangement, which is due to be discussed in upcoming public board meetings.
Asked by: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham, Hodge Hill)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many of the 15,841 covid-19 cases that were not initially reported to Public Health England between 25 September and 2 October 2020 related to individuals who lived in the West Midlands metropolitan area.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
A total of 1,093 of 15,841 covid-19 cases not initially reported to Public Health England between 25 September and 2 October 2020 related to individuals from the West Midlands metropolitan area.