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 ensure NHS trusts consistently meet the 62 day target for starting cancer treatment.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As set out in the new plan for reforming elective care, the Government is committed to improving performance on cancer waiting times. The National Health Service’s annual operational planning guidance set out a national commitment to improve waiting times, including improving performance against the 62-day cancer standard to 75% by March 2026.
The Department is committed to improving waiting times for cancer treatment across England by delivering an extra 40,000 operations, scans, and appointments each week, as the first step to ensuring early diagnosis and faster treatment; we have exceeded our pledge to deliver an extra two million operations, scans, and appointments, having now delivered over three million more appointments. £70 million will also be spent on replacing out-of-date radiotherapy equipment so that cancer patients benefit from faster and safer cancer treatment using the most up-to-date technology. Replacing these older machines will save as many as 13,000 appointments from being lost to equipment breakdown.
Additionally, providers have also been asked to identify local opportunities in both community diagnostic centres and hospital based diagnostic services to improve performance against the faster diagnosis standard, to reduce the number of patients waiting too long for a confirmed diagnosis of cancer and start treatment.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we will improve outcomes for cancer patients, as well as speeding up diagnosis and treatment.
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 his Department has made of trends in the level of (a) harassment and (b) abuse of NHS staff.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There is no national mechanism at present to capture and report incidents of harassment and abuse. Data is held at a local level. The NHS Staff Survey captures data on self-reported incidents. Results from the 2024 NHS Staff Survey showed that 25.08% of staff have experienced at least one incident of harassment, bullying, or abuse from patients or service users in the last 12 months. This shows a slight improvement in trends of the level of staff experiencing harassment, bullying, or abuse since 2020, as it is at its lowest reported levels in the past five years.
However, everyone working in the National Health Service has a fundamental right to be safe at work. There is a zero-tolerance approach to any incidents of harassment or abuse against NHS staff, and the Government is taking further action to tackle it. On 9 April 2025, the Government announced that 36 out of 37 of the non-pay recommendations from the 2023 Agenda for Change pay deal have been accepted. These include significant commitments to tackling violence and aggression against NHS staff. The recommendations include improving the data and reporting of incidents and ensuring Violence Prevention and Reduction standards are upheld and form part of Care Quality Commission’s assessments.
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 his Department is taking to increase the availability of autism assessments.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is the responsibility of the integrated care boards (ICBs) to make available appropriate provision to meet the health and care needs of their local population, including autism assessments and diagnosis, in line with relevant National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines. In doing so, ICBs should take account of waiting lists, considering how local funding can be deployed to best meet the needs of their local population.
On 5 April 2023, NHS England published a national framework and operational guidance to help ICBs and the National Health Service to deliver improved outcomes for children, young people, and adults referred to an autism assessment service. Since publication, NHS England has been supporting systems and services to identify where there are challenges for implementation and how they might overcome these.
NHS England is also working with research organisations to explore evidence-based models that support improved outcomes for those people waiting for an autism assessment.
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 plans to distribute the second tranche of hospice funding based on (a) levels of need and (b) areas of deprivation.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are pleased to confirm that the Government has released the first £25 million tranche of the £100 million of capital funding, with Hospice UK kindly allocating and distributing the money to hospices throughout England. For this first tranche, individual hospice allocations were calculated based on the care expenditure of each hospice.
The second tranche of £75 million of funding will be available from April. We will carefully consider whether the allocation model needs to be amended for this second tranche of funding, and will set out further details as soon as possible.
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 his Department is taking to improve access to mental health services in City of Durham constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Waiting times for those referred to mental health services are too high all across England, including in the City of Durham constituency.
Too many people with mental health issues are not getting the support or care they need, which is why we will fix the broken system to ensure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health, so that people can be confident in accessing high quality mental health support when they need it.
Nationally, we plan to recruit an additional 8,500 mental health workers across child and adult mental health services in England to reduce delays and provide faster treatment. We will also introduce access to a specialist mental health professional in every school and roll out Young Futures hubs in every community.
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 his Department has made of the adequacy of access to NHS dental services in City of Durham constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Dental Statistics - England 2023/24, published by the NHS Business Services Authority on 22 August 2024, is available at the following link:
https://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/statistical-collections/dental-england/dental-statistics-england-202324
In the NHS Northeast and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board, which includes the City of Durham constituency, 45% of adults were seen by a National Health Service dentist in the previous 24 months to June 2024, compared to 40% in England. In addition, 58% of children were seen by an NHS dentist in the previous 12 months to June 2024, compared to 56% in England.
The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access NHS dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most.
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 his Department is taking to support hospices in City of Durham constituency.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are supporting the hospice sector with a £100 million capital funding boost for adult and children’s hospices in England to ensure they have the best physical environment for care. We are working at great pace to get this year’s funding to hospices as soon as possible. We are currently finalising the delivery mechanisms, and are pleased that Hospice UK is standing ready to distribute the money to hospices throughout England, including to hospices in the City of Durham constituency.
We are also providing £26 million of revenue funding to support children and young people’s hospices in 2025/26. NHS England is currently making decisions on the allocation and administration mechanisms for that funding and hopes to communicate plans to the sector later this month.
Earlier this month, I met with key palliative and end of life care, including hospice, stakeholders on 3 February to discuss the long-term sustainability of palliative and end of life care, within the context of our 10-Year Health Plan.
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 his Department is taking to support people with leukaemia in (a) City of Durham constituency and (b) the North East.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Health Service is taking crucial steps to improve cancer outcomes for patients across England, including for leukaemia. We will improve cancer survival rates and hit all NHS cancer waiting time targets, so no patient waits longer than they should.
The Department is committed to implementing the recommendations of the Lord O'Shaughnessy review into commercial clinical trials, making sure that the United Kingdom leads the world in clinical trials, and to ensure that innovative, lifesaving treatments are accessible to NHS patients, including those with leukaemia.
NHS England is also committed to ensuring that cancer patients in all parts of England are offered Holistic Needs Assessment and Personalised Care and Support Planning, ensuring care is focused on what matters most to each person. This commitment is being delivered in line with the NHS Comprehensive Model for Personalised Care, empowering people to manage their care and the impact of their cancer and maximise the potential of digital and community-based support.
Health and wellbeing information and support is provided by healthcare professionals from diagnosis onwards and includes access to NHS Talking Therapy services for anxiety and depression, where considered clinically appropriate. These services are provided alongside wider work to improve psychosocial support for people affected by cancer where possible, such as through local partnerships with cancer support charities.
The National Cancer Plan will include further details on how we support cancer patients, including those with blood cancer. We are now in discussions about what form that plan should take, and what its relationship to the 10-Year Health Plan and the Government’s wider Health Mission should be and will provide updates in due course.
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 adequacy of the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death Regulations 2024 in the context of reports of delays to funeral services.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is monitoring the impact of the death certification reforms, including the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death Regulations 2024, which came into legal effect on 9 September 2024. The median time taken to register a death since the introduction of the reforms in England and Wales has typically been eight days. This figure is for all deaths, as it includes those certified by a doctor and those investigated by a coroner. The median time taken to register a death varies depending on the type of certification. Deaths certified by a doctor, that comprise approximately 80% of deaths registered each week, have typically had a median time to registration of seven days. These figures are not broken down by hospital or community setting. It is important to note that the medical examiner system was active on a non-statutory basis before the introduction of the statutory system on 9 September, and this makes direct before and after comparisons challenging to draw conclusions from.
The core purposes of the death certification reforms are to introduce scrutiny of the cause of death to detect and deter malpractice, to improve reporting, and crucially to put the bereaved at the centre of the process by offering a conversation with the medical examiner about the cause of death. The expectation on doctors and medical examiners is clear, that they should complete certification as quickly and efficiently as possible, and the Government is working with all stakeholders to make sure this is the case.
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 time taken was to certify a death in (a) hospital and (b) the community in the period since changes were made to the death certification process in September 2024.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is monitoring the impact of the death certification reforms, including the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death Regulations 2024, which came into legal effect on 9 September 2024. The median time taken to register a death since the introduction of the reforms in England and Wales has typically been eight days. This figure is for all deaths, as it includes those certified by a doctor and those investigated by a coroner. The median time taken to register a death varies depending on the type of certification. Deaths certified by a doctor, that comprise approximately 80% of deaths registered each week, have typically had a median time to registration of seven days. These figures are not broken down by hospital or community setting. It is important to note that the medical examiner system was active on a non-statutory basis before the introduction of the statutory system on 9 September, and this makes direct before and after comparisons challenging to draw conclusions from.
The core purposes of the death certification reforms are to introduce scrutiny of the cause of death to detect and deter malpractice, to improve reporting, and crucially to put the bereaved at the centre of the process by offering a conversation with the medical examiner about the cause of death. The expectation on doctors and medical examiners is clear, that they should complete certification as quickly and efficiently as possible, and the Government is working with all stakeholders to make sure this is the case.