Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will have discussions with the Nursing and Midwifery Council on the potential merits of reducing or removing the annual registration fee for nurses.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the independent regulator of nurses and midwives in the United Kingdom, and nursing associates in England. The UK's model of healthcare professional regulation is founded on the principle of regulators operating independently from the Government. All registered health and social care professions in the UK pay an annual registration fee to their regulatory body. Being funded by registrant fees enables the NMC to maintain its independence, allowing it to take action if it identifies risks to patient safety or the public’s confidence in the profession.
The Government expects the NMC to run its operations efficiently and keep registration fees as low as possible in order to limit the financial impact on registrants. The Government has no current plans to discuss with the NMC the potential merits of reducing or removing the annual registration fee for nurses.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
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 support families with children suffering from Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Commissioning pathways for avoidant restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID) are locally determined by integrated care boards. All eating disorder teams should work collaboratively with other children and young people’s community teams to address co-occurring conditions as needed.
NHS England recognises the importance of patient-centre care, tailored to meet the needs of children and young people with varied presentations, including ARFID, and the children and young people’s eating disorder guidance is currently being updated to reflect this. The intention is for the updated guidance to increase the focus on early identification of and intervention in eating disorders including ARFID and to highlight the importance of a truly integrated approach which takes account of the needs of the patient, their family and/or carers.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
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 ensure that independent community pharmacies have adequate funding to sustain their (a) businesses and (b) services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government recognises that pharmacies are an integral part of the fabric of our communities. They provide an easily accessible ‘front door’ to the National Health Service, staffed by highly trained and skilled healthcare professionals.
We have now concluded the consultation on funding for 2024/25 and 2025/26, and have agreed with Community Pharmacy England (CPE) to increase the community pharmacy contractual framework to £3.073 billion. CPE represents all pharmacy contractors in England, including independent community pharmacies. This deal represents the largest uplift in funding of any part of the NHS, at over 19% across 2024/25 and 2025/26. This shows a first step in delivering stability for the future and a commitment to rebuilding the sector.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
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 social care providers are receiving the £600 million pounds allocated for social care in the Autumn Budget 2024.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is making available up to £3.7 billion of additional funding for social care authorities in 2025/26, which includes an £880 million increase in the Social Care Grant, £600 million of which was announced at the Autumn Budget 2024. Overall, core local government spending power will increase by 6.8% in cash terms in 2025/26. Local authorities are responsible for how they use the available funding to fulfil their duties under the Care Act 2014.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
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 reduce waiting times for people with (a) Motor Neurone Disease and (b) other degenerative conditions.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
Patients, including those with motor neurone disease (MND), have been let down for too long whilst they wait for the care they need. The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.
We have made a commitment that 92% of patients should wait no longer than 18 weeks from Referral to Treatment within our first term. This includes those waiting for treatment for MND. As a first step to achieving this, following the Budget, we will deliver an additional 2 million operations, scans, and appointments across all specialities during our first year in Government, which is equivalent to 40,000 per week.
At the national level, there are a number of initiatives supporting service improvement and better care for patients with MND, including the Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) Programme for Neurology and the RightCare Progressive Neurological Conditions Toolkit. NHS England has also established a Neurology Transformation Programme (NTP), a multi-year, clinically led programme to develop a new model of integrated care for neurology services, including MND.
The GIRFT National Specialty Report made recommendations designed to improve services nationally and to support the National Health Service to deliver care more equitably across the country. The report highlighted differences in how services are delivered, and provided the opportunity to share successful initiatives between trusts to improve patient services nationally.
In addition, the NTP has developed a model of integrated care for neurology services to support integrated care boards (ICBs) to deliver the right service, at the right time, for all neurology patients, including providing care closer to home. A toolkit is being developed to support ICBs to understand and implement this new model. The NTP has also developed an online, interactive adult neurology dashboard to support systems to understand their local neurology landscape and benchmark against other ICBs in England. It sets out key metrics and visualisations for neurology services locally, providing information about the scope and quality of local neurology services using existing whole population, whole pathway data.
The NTP is also working with the National Clinical Director for Neurology and the Neurology Clinical Reference Group to develop a revised service specification for neurology, which will: set out clear deliverables for specialised centres; provide a clearer model of care, incorporating up-to-date guidance and best practice; and set out new quality outcomes focusing on improving patient outcomes and experience.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
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 help ensure that people with additional communication needs are able to access (a) online appointment bookings and (b) other digital healthcare services.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
All National Health Service organisations and publicly funded social care providers in England are required to meet the Accessible Information Standard to meet the communication needs of patients and carers with a disability, impairment, or sensory loss.
Patients are able to request general practice appointments and manage secondary care appointments through local online tools and the NHS App, which can also be accessed through a web browser. The NHS App is designed to meet international accessibility standards and the services are routinely tested with a range of people with accessibility issues. User reviews and research show the NHS App and website to be highly usable and simple to use. Local online tools must also meet minimum accessibility standards.
Digital healthcare services are part of a multi-channel offering, and patients unable to use digital channels can continue to access services via telephone and through traditional face to face services. Digital services must be designed to alleviate healthcare inequalities rather than exacerbate them. Our goal is to ensure that reducing healthcare inequalities and improving digital inclusion have due focus in wider inclusive user design and delivery for all digital health products and services, including through implementation of the NHS England Digital Inclusion Framework.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will hold discussions with Healthwatch Leeds on the potential merits of implementing their policy on communication, coordination and compassion in other parts of the country.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
While there are no current plans for my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to meet with Healthwatch Leeds, he does meet with stakeholders regularly about a range of issues.
NHS England has carefully considered the points raised in Healthwatch Leeds’ paper, in particular its recommendations for how providers and commissioners should communicate change to people and their communities. In 2022, NHS England published statutory guidance on working with people and communities, which is available at the following link:
This guidance supports integrated care boards (ICBs) and providers to meet their legal duties to involve the public in changes to services, and highlights the importance of communicating effectively with communities. NHS England carries out an annual assessment of ICBs, which includes how they meet their public involvement legal duty.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of implementing the recommendations of the briefing paper by Healthwatch Leeds entitled Communicating change, published in September 2024.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
While there are no current plans for my Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to meet with Healthwatch Leeds, he does meet with stakeholders regularly about a range of issues.
NHS England has carefully considered the points raised in Healthwatch Leeds’ paper, in particular its recommendations for how providers and commissioners should communicate change to people and their communities. In 2022, NHS England published statutory guidance on working with people and communities, which is available at the following link:
This guidance supports integrated care boards (ICBs) and providers to meet their legal duties to involve the public in changes to services, and highlights the importance of communicating effectively with communities. NHS England carries out an annual assessment of ICBs, which includes how they meet their public involvement legal duty.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
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 support people diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The Government is committed to improving the lives of those living with rare diseases, such as Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). The UK Rare Diseases Framework sets out four priorities collaboratively developed with the rare disease community. These include better coordination of care and improving access to specialist care, treatments, and drugs. We remain committed to delivering under the framework, and will publish an annual England action plan in 2025 which will report on progress.
NHS England commissions some specialist services for patients with EDS, currently delivered by two centres in England, the London North West University Healthcare Trust and the Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust. The Complex EDS service provides diagnosis and advice to referrers on the treatment and management of complex cases.
Asked by: Mark Sewards (Labour - Leeds South West and Morley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential merits of making tuition free for dental students; and what steps he is taking to ensure that dentists receive adequate funding to treat NHS patients.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is determined to rebuild National Health Service dentistry, but it will take time and there are no quick fixes. Strengthening the workforce is key to our ambitions.
The Government will make sure the NHS has the staff it needs to be there for all of us when we need it. We have no plans to make tuition free for dental students. From year five of an undergraduate course, and from year two of a graduate-entry course, dental students can access the NHS Bursary. This is non-repayable and comprises payment for tuition fees and, where eligible, further grants and allowances.
The Government will tackle the immediate crisis with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contact, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.