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Written Question
Gynaecology: Waiting Lists
Thursday 29th February 2024

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of waiting times for gynaecological care and treatment in (a) the North East and (b) England as of 21 February 2023.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care outlines how the National Health Service will bring down waiting times across all elective services. The plan does not prioritise specialties, but the NHS continues to focus on reducing the longest waits, providing high levels of support and scrutiny, targeted at the trusts which have the highest number of patients waiting the longest for elective treatment.

To support this plan and tackle waiting lists, including those in gynaecology, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to drive up and protect elective activity. We are also increasing capacity, including for gynaecological surgery, through our surgical hubs, delivered by the Getting It Right First Time ‘High Volume Low Complexity’ programme.


Written Question
Hysterectomy: Waiting Lists
Thursday 29th February 2024

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to reduce waiting times for a hysterectomy in (a) County Durham and (b) England.

Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The Delivery Plan for Tackling the COVID-19 Backlog of Elective Care outlines how the National Health Service will bring down waiting times across all elective services. The plan does not prioritise specialties or certain interventions, but the NHS continues to focus on reducing the longest waiting times and providing high levels of support and scrutiny, targeted at the trusts which have the highest number of patients waiting the longest time, for elective treatment.

To support this plan and tackle waiting lists, including those in gynaecology, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25 to drive up and protect elective activity. We are also increasing capacity, including for gynaecological surgery, through our surgical hubs, delivered by the Getting It Right First Time’s High Volume Low Complexity programme.


Written Question
Health Services: North East
Tuesday 23rd January 2024

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

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 help tackle health inequalities in the North East.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

  • As Vice-Chair of the APPG on Smoking and Health, the Honourable Lady will know that Government’s commitment to a smoke-free generation will tackle the single biggest driver of the health gap.
  • Local authorities in the North East will receive an extra £3.7m for smoking cessation services next year, and £27m to treat drug addiction which harms deprived communities most.
  • Dental health inequalities are also a real concern. We will consult on a water fluoridation scheme for the North East, which will deliver greatest benefit to children and adults in disadvantaged communities.

Written Question
Autism: Diagnosis
Thursday 7th December 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to reduce waiting lists for autism assessments (a) nationally and (b) in County Durham.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

We expect integrated care boards (ICBs) to have due regard to relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on autism when commissioning services. It is the responsibility of ICBs to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, in line with these NICE guidelines.

Each ICB in England, including in the North East and North Cumbria, is expected to have an Executive Lead for learning disability and autism, supporting the board in planning to meet the needs of its local population of people with a learning disability and autistic people, including in relation to appropriate autism assessment pathways. NHS England has published guidance on these roles.

On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance for autism assessment services. This guidance will help the National Health Service improve autism assessment pathways and improve the experience for people referred to an autism assessment service.

In addition, NHS England publish quarterly data on how many people are waiting for an autism assessment and for how long. These are experimental statistics; however, the data does provide useful information nationally and locally to support local areas to improve their performance and to reduce assessment waiting times.

We have invested in improving autism assessment services over recent years. Building on the 2021/22 investment of £13 million, we invested £2.5 million in 2022/23 to support local areas with improvements in autism assessment pathways. In 2023/2024, £4.2 million of funding is available across England to improve services for autistic children and young people, including autism assessment services.


Written Question
Health Services: Weather
Tuesday 28th November 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of NHS preparedness in County Durham for winter 2023-24; and how much additional funding her Department plans to provide to NHS services in County Durham for winter 2023-24.

Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

No specific assessment has been made centrally by the Department, as local winter resilience plans and resourcing are an operational matter for the National Health Service.

NHS winter planning started earlier this year than in previous years. The urgent and emergency care recovery plan was published in January which included £1 billion of dedicated funding to support capacity. In July 2023, NHS England wrote to integrated care boards, trusts and primary care networks to set out a national approach to 2023/24 winter planning and the key steps to be taken across all parts of the system to meet the challenges expected from winter pressures.


Written Question
Dental Services: City of Durham
Thursday 23rd November 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average waiting time was for registering with an NHS dentist in City of Durham constituency in the latest period for which data is available.

Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)

Patients do not routinely join National Health Service dental waiting lists and are only registered with a dental practice for a course of treatment. We are working on our Dentistry Recovery Plan which will address how we continue to improve access, particularly for new patients; and how we make NHS work more attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver more NHS care.


Written Question
General Practitioners: County Durham
Thursday 26th October 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many GPs worked in (a) County Durham and (b) the City of Durham constituency in each year since 2010.

Answered by Neil O'Brien

The following table shows the number of full time equivalent (FTE) doctors in general practice in the City of Durham constituency from June 2017 to June 2023:

Date

Doctors in general practice, FTE

June 2017

51.8

June 2018

59.6

June 2019

58.7

June 2020

59.1

June 2021

61.2

June 2022

65.6

June 2023

68.7

Notes:

  1. Data does not include estimates for practices that did not provide fully valid staff records
  2. 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. In GPs in Training Grade 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Practices in City of Durham constituency were identified using the National Statistics Postcode Lookup.

Practice data was not published before September 2015. The data for County Durham is not available.


Written Question
Obesity: Children
Monday 23rd October 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

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 implications for his policies of childhood obesity levels in (a) City of Durham constituency, (b) County Durham, (c) the North East and (d) England; and what steps his Department is taking to tackle childhood obesity in each of those areas.

Answered by Neil O'Brien

The National Child Measurement Programme (NCMP) collects data on children aged four to five years old (Reception) and 10 to 11 years old (Year 6).

The following table shows data on obesity prevalence from the NCMP in the academic year 2022-23. Data is not available at Parliamentary constituency level but is available at local authority, regional and England levels:

Percentage of children living with obesity

Area

Reception (%)

Year 6 (%)

County Durham

11.8

25.6

North East

11.3

25.8

England

9.2

22.7

Local authorities and the National Health Service provide weight management services to support children and families to achieve and maintain a healthier weight. Local authorities can fund behavioural weight management services from their Public Health Grant.

In England, new regulations on out-of-home calorie labelling for food sold in large businesses, including restaurants, cafes and takeaways, came into force in April 2022. Restrictions on the placement of less healthy products in key selling locations in store and online came into force in October 2022. The location restrictions are the single most impactful obesity policy in reducing children’s calorie consumption, and are expected to accrue health benefits of over £57 billion and provide savings to the National Health Service of over £4 billion over the next 25 years.

We are also working with the food industry to make further progress on reformulation and ensure it is easier for the public to make healthier choices. We have seen important successes including the average sugar content of drinks subject to the Soft Drinks Industry Levy decreasing by 46% between 2015 and 2020. There has also been success in some categories of the sugar reduction programme, including a 14.9% reduction of sugar in retailer- and manufacturer-branded breakfast cereals and a 13.5% reduction in yogurts and fromage frais.


Written Question
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman: Standards
Thursday 20th July 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

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 of the potential merits of enabling the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman to enforce rulings in cases of NHS complaints raised with the service.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

We are not persuaded of the need for legal enforcement powers for the Parliamentary and Health Service’s (PHSO) rulings. The PHSO has processes in place to ensure recommendations are acted upon, ranging from following up with the organisation and escalating to a senior level within the organisation if required. In the rare instances that an organisation fails or refuses to act on a PHSO recommendation, PHSO has options to escalate within Parliament and make regulators or commissioners aware of such a failure.


Written Question
Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman: Standards
Thursday 20th July 2023

Asked by: Mary Kelly Foy (Labour - City of Durham)

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 adequacy of the performance of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman in resolving NHS complaints.

Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)

Ministers do not assess any aspect of the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman’s performance. The Ombudsman reports to Parliament directly and is held to account through the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee, who hold an annual scrutiny session to evaluate his performance.