Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
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 encourage the World Health Organisation to facilitate Taiwan's attendance as an observer in the 2018 World Health Assembly.
Answered by Steve Brine
The United Kingdom continues to support Taiwan’s meaningful participation in international organisations where statehood is not a prerequisite and where Taiwan can make a valuable contribution. The UK believes the World Health Assembly (WHA) meets these criteria.
The Department has supported the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. We have worked with likeminded countries to lobby the World Health Organization at official level to issue an invitation to Taiwan to observe the WHA.
Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many babies found to have Down 's syndrome were aborted in each of the last three years, broken down by (a) gestation of the pregnancy and (b) health authority area.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The data on Down Syndrome are provided in the attached tables.
Data for length of gestation is presented in table 1 for all gestations and for gestations 24 weeks and over.
The Department holds abortion data by clinical commissioning group (CCG) and local authority, rather than Health Authority. Data for CCGs is presented in table 2. This data has been aggregated to CCG region due to the disclosive nature of the data at individual CCG area.
Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what information his Department holds on the number of women expecting a baby with a disability who (a) did and (b) did not have an abortion in each of the last three years; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jackie Doyle-Price
The Department collects and publishes statistics for the number of abortions that are carried out under the statutory ground E (risk that the child would be born ‘seriously handicapped’). This data is published in tables 9a-c of the 2016 abortion statistics in England and Wales at the following link:
Public Health England collects data on congenital anomalies as part of the National congenital anomaly and rare disease registration service. Information on the timing of diagnosis and outcome is published in chapter 2 of the Congenital anomaly statistics 2015 which is available at the following link:
Asked by: Martin Vickers (Conservative - Cleethorpes)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress is being made on turning round hospitals in special measures.
Answered by Jeremy Hunt - Chancellor of the Exchequer
In the last four years, 35 trusts have been put into Special Measures. Of those 20 have now come out – eight of which are now rated ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding by the Care Quality Commission. I particularly congratulate the staff of Barking, Havering and Redbridge, East Kent, Medway and North Cumbria, which have all come out of Special Measures recently.