Asked by: Margaret Mullane (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department has taken to improve (a) early diagnosis and (b) treatment of silicosis in the NHS.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to increasing the capacity of respiratory services and is improving access to these services through new community diagnostic centres (CDCs). All standard and large CDCs are required to offer diagnostic respiratory tests which can diagnose silicosis, such as spirometry and full lung function tests as part of their core testing offer.
The National Health Service has specialist centres for diagnosing and managing lung diseases that cause scarring, such as silicosis. NHS Interstitial Lung Disease clinics offer expert care from specialist respiratory doctors and nurses, often with access to additional services like lung function testing and research facilities.
Asked by: Margaret Mullane (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
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 help reduce elective care waiting times (a) in general and (b) for joint replacement surgery.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first and tackling waiting lists as part of our Health Mission. We exceeded our pledge to deliver an extra two million appointments, tests, and operations in our first year of Government, delivering 5.2 million additional appointments between July 2024 and June 2025. This marks a vital first step to delivering on our commitment to return to the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment by March 2029.
The Department is taking a range of steps to reduce waiting times for surgery, including joint replacement surgery. There are currently 123 surgical hubs operational across England, and we are committed to expanding the number of hubs over the next three years to increase surgical capacity and deliver faster access to common procedures. Surgical hubs have been shown to deliver approximately 20% increased productivity in the hubs compared to trusts without a dedicated elective hub on site.
The Getting it Right First time (GIRFT) programme published detailed guidance for hip and knee replacements in July 2023 and has been supporting trusts through a multidisciplinary team made up of anaesthetic, surgical, and allied health professional colleagues. Additionally, GIRFT is leading a community musculoskeletal programme, supporting improvements in the early stages of the pathway, to ensure that only those patients who require surgery are referred into secondary care, and that their condition is optimised for surgery as far as possible at the point of referral. Further information on the GIRFT programme is available at the following link:
https://gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/
Asked by: Margaret Mullane (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of fully funding the specialist palliative (a) care, (b) advice and (c) assessment provided by hospices.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Whilst the majority of palliative care and end of life care is provided by National Health Service staff and services, we recognise the vital part that voluntary sector organisations, including hospices, also play in providing support to people at the end of life, as well as their loved ones.
Integrated care boards (ICBs) are responsible for the commissioning of palliative care and end of life care services, to meet the needs of their local populations. To support ICBs in this duty, NHS England has published statutory guidance and service specifications.
The amount of funding charitable hospices receive varies by ICB area, and will, in part, be dependent on the breadth of palliative care, including specialist palliative care, and end of life care provision within each ICB catchment area. It is important to note that hospices, like the NHS, provide both specialist and generalist palliative care and end of life care. Not all patients will require specialist palliative care.
We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for eligible adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care.
We are also providing £26 million in revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices for 2025/26. I can also now confirm the continuation of this vital funding for the three years of the next Spending Review period, from 2026/27 to 2028/29 inclusive. This funding will see approximately £26 million, adjusted for inflation, allocated to children and young people’s hospices in England each year, via their local ICBs and on behalf of NHS England, as happened in 2024/25 and 2025/26. This amounts to approximately £80 million over the next three years.
Asked by: Margaret Mullane (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the NHS 10-Year Plan reflects the specific (a) workforce, (b) training and (c) capacity needs of children's palliative care services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of the work to develop a 10-Year Health Plan, we have been carefully considering policies, including those that impact people with palliative care and end of life care needs, with input from the public, patients, health staff, and stakeholders.
The Government is determined to shift more healthcare out of hospitals and into the community, to ensure patients and families receive personalised care in the most appropriate setting, and children’s palliative care and end of life care services, will have a big role to play in that shift.
A central part of our forthcoming 10-Year Health Plan will be our workforce, including how we ensure we train and provide the staff, technology, and infrastructure the National Health Service needs to care for patients, including those with palliative care and end of life care needs, across our communities.
We will also publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to deliver the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, and treat patients on time again. We will ensure the NHS has the right people, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it, including for those with palliative care and end of life care needs.
Asked by: Margaret Mullane (Labour - Dagenham and Rainham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) increase scanner availability for dementia diagnosis, (b) reduce diagnosis times and (c) improve patient outcomes.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to transforming diagnostic services and will support the National Health Service to increase diagnostic capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new capacity, including magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners.
Our Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, builds on the investments already made with an ambitious vision for the future of diagnostic testing. This will include more straight-to-test pathways, increasing and expanding community diagnostic centres (CDCs), and better use of technology. With 170 CDCs due to be up and running by the end of March 2025, CDCs can take on more of the growing diagnostic demand within elective care. We will also deliver additional CDC capacity in 2025/26 by expanding a number of existing CDCs and building up to five new ones.
Alongside Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, Gates Ventures, and the People’s Postcode Lottery, the National Institute for Health and Care Research is funding the Blood Biomarker Challenge which seeks to produce the clinical and economic data that could make the case for the use of a blood test in the NHS to support the diagnosis of dementia.
The Dementia Care Pathway: Full Implementation Guidance, commissioned by NHS England, outlines the dementia care pathway and associated benchmarks to support improvements in the delivery and quality of care and support, for people living with dementia and their families and carers. The guide showcases good-practice examples of services that have successfully reduced their waiting times. Further information is available at the following link: