Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what information his Department holds on the number of complaints that have been made to the Care Quality Commission about social care providers in the last 12 months; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Over the last 12 months, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) received 31,904 complaints related to adult social care services. The CQC does not have legal powers to resolve complaints, but it uses the information it receives from complaints to help shape its regulatory activity.
People receiving care have a right to complain to the organisation that provided or paid for the care. By law, all health and social care services must have a procedure for dealing efficiently with complaints. In the first instance, a complaint should be made to the service provider. If the care is funded or arranged by a local council, a complaint can be made to them as well. If someone has made a complaint to the care provider or local council and are unhappy with the response, they can make a complaint to the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.
My Rt. Hon friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, does not intend to make a statement at this time.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of people diagnosed with a bipolar condition.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The information requested is not available in the format requested, due to limitations of the diagnosis data collected within the Mental Health Services Dataset.
Analysis shows that around 20-25% of people in the dataset have a diagnosis recorded, therefore any data provided for diagnosis would represent an undercount. Alternative data is presented showing the number of referrals to secondary mental health services where the primary reason for referral was bipolar disorder in England between 2021/22 and 2022/23.
According to NHS England, the number of referrals to mental health services in England where the primary reason for referral was recorded as bipolar disorder was 20,201 in 2021/22 and 19,805 in 2022/23. Additionally, data for 2022/23 were impacted by a cyber incident, which meant that some providers were unable to submit data and the number of referrals may be underreported.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether the Department has made an assessment of the implications for his policies of the findings in the report entitled Bipolar Minds Matter, published by Bipolar UK in November 2022.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
No such formal assessment has been made.
However, we remain committed to investing in mental health services in the National Health Service in England by at least £2.3 billion a year by March 2024, as set out in the NHS Long Term Plan. This includes significant investment to the transformation of community mental health services, which aims to increase access to high quality care and transform care pathways to provide care in the community for people with severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of people on waiting lists for ophthalmology surgery in North Central London.
Answered by Will Quince
The most recent published NHS England statistics from July 2023 show that there were 11,167 people waiting for ophthalmology surgery within the North Central London Integrated Care Board.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the average length of time is that it takes his Department to respond to Members’ correspondence.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department continues to treat correspondence from parliamentarians as a priority and the Cabinet Office standard for responses is 20 working days. Volumes continue to be higher than they were pre-pandemic, and we are working though detailed recovery plans to improve our response rates.
With regards to the timeliness of responses to enquiries received by members, the Cabinet Office published data on this for 2022 for all Government Departments on GOV.UK in March 2023, and will be publishing data for Q1 and Q2 2023 shortly. The 2022 data is available at the following link:
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to bring forward legislative proposals to reform the Mental Health Act 2007.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Government remains committed to reforming mental health legislation in England and will introduce a Mental Health Bill when Parliamentary time allows.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many penalty charge notices for wrongly claimed prescriptions were issued in the last year.
Answered by Will Quince
From September 2022 to August 2023, the NHS Business Services Authority issued 557,307 penalty charge notices for wrongly claimed free prescriptions.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has taken steps to ensure that pharmacists do not accidentally indicate that a patient is eligible for a waiver on prescription payments.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
Real Time Exemption Checking (RTEC) is in operation across the majority of community pharmacies in England. This enables pharmacies to confirm a person’s eligibility for free National Health Service prescriptions through real-time checks of NHS and Department for Work and Pensions data, prior to dispensing their prescription items. Where RTEC is in place and finds a valid exemption for a patient, they are not required to sign a patient declaration confirming their exemption.
In cases where RTEC is not used and a patient makes a declaration that they are exempt from paying an NHS prescription charge, pharmacy staff must ask them to sign a declaration and produce evidence. Pharmacies must advise the person claiming an exemption, where evidence is required but not provided, that the NHS undertakes checks to verify that such persons are eligible for free prescriptions. This is a legislative requirement of a pharmacist’s terms of service. It should be noted that pharmacists are instructed to dispense prescriptions whether or not evidence is seen.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the cost to the public purse of the pay demand made by the British Medical Association junior doctors committee.
Answered by Will Quince
The British Medical Association junior doctors committee has asked for an average pay rise of around 35% from 2021-22 pay scales. This would cost over £2 billion on top of the existing pay award to junior doctors for 2022/23.
This is an estimate of the expected cost if the pay rise were given in 2023/24. The exact cost will vary depending on the workforce size and composition. It represents the gross cost of the uplift payable from National Health Service funding, covering junior doctors working in hospital and general practitioner settings, and allowing for full system costs beyond the substantive workforce.
Asked by: Matthew Offord (Conservative - Hendon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 4 July 2023 to Question 191296 on patient waiting times for MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) treatment for Essential tremor, what assessment his Department made of the adequacy of the capacity of the two MRgFUS treatment centres on reducing wait times for Essential Tremor patients.
Answered by Will Quince
There are two trusts in the National Health Service that support MR-Guided Focussed Ultrasound (MRgFUS) treatment for essential tremor. These are Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust.
Imperial NHS Trust has 12 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners listed within the 2021-22 National Imaging Data Collection. With the addition of new Community Diagnostic Centres across the trust’s network, capacity for MRI will be increased further which should provide support for a reduction in waiting times.
The Walton Centre has five MRI scanners listed within the 2021-22 National Imaging Data Collection.
With this number of MRI scanners, NHS England assesses that there will be sufficient MRI capacity to deliver MRgFUS treatment for local Essential Tremor patients. The Department continues to work with NHS England to support systems to maximise the utilisation of these MRI scanners which should in turn support a reduction in waiting times for services.