Liam Fox: Written Answers (95)

Written Question

General Practitioners: Bureaucracy

Monday 15th January 2024

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to reduce the number of administrative tasks which GPs are required to perform.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom

The Delivery plan for recovering access to primary care, published by NHS England in May 2023, set out actions on how bureaucracy and workload can be cut by improving the interface between primary and secondary care, cutting unnecessary burdens on general practitioners (GPs) through the Bureaucracy Busting Concordat, published in August 2022, and streamlining the Investment and Impact Fund from 36 to five indicators from 2023/24.

In response to feedback from the profession to make incentive schemes more streamlined and focused, the Department has launched a public consultation on incentive schemes in general practice.

The expanded primary care teams funded through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme add extra clinical capacity, helping to reduce the burden on GPs.

Written Question

General Practitioners

Monday 15th January 2024

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to reduce the workload of GPs.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom

In response to feedback from the profession to make incentive schemes more streamlined and focused, the Department has launched a public consultation on incentive schemes in general practice.

The expanded primary care teams funded through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme add extra clinical capacity, helping to reduce the burden on GPs.

Written Question

Planning

Monday 18th December 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what his planned timetable is for publishing a new National Planning Policy Framework.

Answered by Lee Rowley

We intend to publish updates to the existing NPPF later in 2023 after considering comments received from our December 2022 consultation.

Written Question

Health Services and Social Services: VAT

Wednesday 18th October 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, how much accrued to the Exchequer from VAT on health and social care training in each of the last five years.

Answered by Victoria Atkins - Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Businesses are not required to provide figures at a product level within their VAT returns, as this would impose an excessive administrative burden.

The information requested is therefore not available.

Written Question

Strikes: Economic Growth

Monday 11th September 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what estimate the ONS has made of the impact of strike action on growth in (a) each of the last three quarters and (b) June.

Answered by Jeremy Quin

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

A response to the Hon gentleman’s Parliamentary Question of 1 September is attached.

Written Question

NHS: Pay

Monday 11th September 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS mangers are paid over (a) £80,000, (b) £130,000, (c) £200,000 and (d) £250,000 a year as of 1 September 2023.

Answered by Will Quince

The following table shows the headcount number of managers in the National Health Service with total earnings of over the requested amounts in the 12 months to the end of March 2023, the latest period available. These are total earnings, which include non-basic-pay elements such as overtime, geographic allowances, or on-call payments, though these will not make a significant part of managers earnings.

Range	Headcount
£80,000 - £129,999	8678
£130,000 - £199,999	1248
£200,000 - £249,999	149
£250,000 and over	58

Source: NHS England Digital Earnings Statistics

Notes:

Data is sourced from the ESR, which is the Human Resources and Payroll system used throughout secondary care by organisations in the HCHS. It includes staff working for NHS trusts, NHS foundation trusts, integrated care boards and central and support organisations in England.
Data covers people in the staff groups of ‘managers’ and ‘senior managers’ as defined by their NHS Occupation Code. All managers/senior managers who need to be a qualified doctor, qualified nurse, qualified therapist, qualified scientist, or trained ambulance personnel should be coded in their professional staff group, for example as a nurse and are not included in these figures.
If an individual worked in more than one managerial role over the course of the year the earnings are summed to give a person level total. Earnings for roles outside of management are not included.

Written Question

Health Services: Waiting Lists

Wednesday 19th July 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of industrial action on patient waiting lists.

Answered by Will Quince

Following any period of strike action, NHS England publish data on their website on the impact of industrial action. This sets out the number of staff absent as a result of industrial action, and the number of procedures and appointments rescheduled. The data do not include the impact on waiting lists. The data is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/preparedness-for-potential-industrial-action-in-the-nhs/

Written Question

General Practitioners: Employment

Wednesday 19th July 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Education)

The table below shows the number full-time equivalent GPs were active in 2020, 2015, 2005, 2000 and 1995.

Year	All GPs (full time equivalent)
September 1995	29,248
September 2000	26,114
September 2005	31,901
September 2015	34,392
September 2020	35,393

Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/general-and-personal-medical-services

Notes

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) refers to the proportion of full-time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. For GPs in Training Grades’ contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours for consistency.
Figures shown do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres, and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.

Data from September 2015 onwards was collected using a new methodology and should therefore not be directly compared with data from before September 2015. Figures from September 2015 should be treated with caution as the data submission rates under the new methodology from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. This means that the reported figures for the early years of the collection may be lower than the true picture. In September 2015, which was the first extract from the new Workforce Minimum Data Set, only three of four Health Education England regions submitted data.
It is not recommended that comparisons be made between quarterly or monthly figures (e.g. Mar 16 to Sept 16) due to the unknown effect of seasonality on workforce numbers. Any such comparisons should therefore be treated with extreme caution.
Figures from earlier collections (September 2005 to September 2015) should be treated with caution as the data submission rates from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. This means that the reported figures for the early years of the collection may be lower than the true picture.

Written Question

General Practitioners: Staff

Wednesday 19th July 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many full-time general practice staff were (a) male and (b) female in (i) 2020, (ii) 2015, (iii) 2010, (iv) 2005, (v) 2000 and (vi) 1995.

Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Education)

The table below shows the number of full-time general practice staff who were male and female in September 2005, 2010, 2015 and 2020. Data is not broken down by gender for all practice staff for 2000 and 1995.

Year	Female (all practice staff)	Male (all practice staff)
September 2005	12,192	19,710
September 2010	15,361	19,881
September 2015	91,902	20,414
September 2020	108,682	23,081

Source: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/general-and-personal-medical-services

Notes

Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) refers to the proportion of full-time contracted hours that the post holder is contracted to work. 1 would indicate they work a full set of hours (37.5), 0.5 that they worked half time. For GPs in Training Grades’ contracts 1 FTE = 40 hours and in this table these FTEs have been converted to the standard wMDS measure of 1 FTE = 37.5 hours for consistency.

Figures shown do not include staff working in prisons, army bases, educational establishments, specialist care centres including drug rehabilitation centres, walk-in centres and other alternative settings outside of traditional general practice such as urgent treatment centres and minor injury units.
Data from September 2015 onwards was collected using a new methodology and should therefore not be directly compared with data from before September 2015. Figures from September 2015 should be treated with caution as the data submission rates under the new methodology from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. This means that the reported figures for the early years of the collection may be lower than the true picture. In September 2015, which was the first extract from the new Workforce Minimum Data Set, only three of four Health Education England regions submitted data.
It is not recommended that comparisons be made between quarterly or monthly figures (e.g. Mar 16 to Sept 16) due to the unknown effect of seasonality on workforce numbers. Any such comparisons should therefore be treated with extreme caution.
Figures from earlier collections (September 2005 to September 2015) should be treated with caution as the data submission rates from practices were appreciably lower than for subsequent reporting periods. This means that the reported figures for the early years of the collection may be lower than the true picture.

Written Question

Civil Servants: Dismissal

Wednesday 3rd May 2023

Asked by: Liam Fox (Conservative - North Somerset)

Question to the Cabinet Office:

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, how many employees have been dismissed from the civil service in each of the last 10 years.

Answered by Jeremy Quin

The number of dismissals in the Civil Service for each of the last 10 years are shown in the table below. The number of dismissals for the year ending 31 March 2023 are scheduled for release on 26 July 2023 as part of the National Statistics bulletin Civil Service Statistics 2023. The number of staff leaving, by leaving cause, is published as one of the standard tables and all of the dismissal data presented in the answer is already in the public domain.

Table 1: Number of dismissals in the Civil Service, 2012/13 to 2021/22

Year ending	Number
31 March 2013	2,390
31 March 2014	2,340
31 March 2015	2,460
31 March 2016	2,570
31 March 2017	2,590
31 March 2018	2,220
31 March 2019	2,360
31 March 2020	2,570
31 March 2021	1,880
31 March 2022	1,950

Source: Annual Civil Service Employment Survey, Cabinet Office

Figures rounded to nearest 10

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