Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when NHS England will publish the delayed breast screening uptake improvement plan.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England will publish a Breast Screening Programme Uptake Improvement Review this year, to help improve uptake and address inequalities.
The review supports breast screening service providers with national solutions such as:
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 delays caused by inadequate clinic capacity that prevent urgent breast referrals from meeting the 28 day Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department is supporting the National Health Service to increase capacity to meet the demand for diagnostic services through investment in new magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography scanners. The Government is investing an extra £26 billion in the NHS over two years and is opening up community diagnostic centres at evening and weekends, to help catch cancer earlier, including breast cancer.
To ensure that those with signs and symptoms that may indicate breast cancer have cancer diagnosed or ruled out as quickly as possible, NHS England has published guidance for local systems on implementing a timed breast cancer diagnostic pathway. The guidance sets out how diagnosis within 28-days can be achieved for the suspected breast cancer pathway in line with Faster Diagnosis Standard.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has been made of the impact of his Department’s requirement for opportunity cost neutrality in NICE’s severity modifier on investment in treatments for more severe conditions.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is responsible for the methods and processes that it uses in the development of its recommendations. The severity modifier was introduced in January 2022 as part of a number of changes intended to make NICE’s methods fairer, faster and more consistent.
The design of the NICE severity modifier was based on the principle of opportunity cost neutrality to ensure that introducing additional weighting for severe conditions did not increase overall National Health Service spending or displace more care than the previous end-of-life modifier. This approach protects the finite NHS budget by preventing inflationary effects on costs, ensuring that prioritising severe conditions does not reduce health benefits for other patients elsewhere in the system.
NICE carried out a review of the implementation of the severity modifier in September 2024 and found that it is operating as intended with a greater proportion of medicines recommended than under NICE’s previous methods. Since then, NICE has continued to monitor how the severity modifier is being applied. The latest figures include data from technology appraisals published up until the end of September 2025 and show that the proportion of positive decisions has increased since the severity modifier was implemented and since data was published in September 2024. 87.0% of decisions taken since the severity modifier was implemented, compared with 82.5% when the end-of-life modifier was being used.
NICE has commissioned research to gather further evidence on societal preferences that will inform future methods reviews.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 ensure that people living with incurable secondary breast cancer have timely access to new and effective medicines, including treatments such as Enhertu and Trodelvy.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body that makes recommendations on whether new licensed medicines should be routinely funded by the National Health Service based on an assessment of clinical and cost effectiveness.
NICE has recommended Enhertu, also named trastuzumab deruxtecan, for use in the Cancer Drugs Fund for the treatment of women with HER2-positive secondary breast cancer and it is now available for the treatment of eligible patients while further data on its effectiveness is being collected that will inform a NICE decision on routine funding. NICE did not recommend Enhertu for the treatment of HER-2 low metastatic and unresectable breast cancer as a clinically and cost-effective use of NHS resources.
NICE terminated its appraisal of Trodelvy, also named sacituzumab govitecan, for treating hormone receptor-positive HER2-negative metastatic breast cancer after two or more treatments in August 2025, as the company, Gilead, did not provide an evidence submission.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he last met with the Patient Safety Commissioner.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There has been no formal meeting between my Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, and the Patient Safety Commissioner. However, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Baroness Merron), in her previous role as the minister with responsibility for patient safety and patient voice, met with the Patient Safety Commissioner in January 2025.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, on what date his Department will publish the terms of reference for the national maternity review.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Independent Maternity and Neonatal Investigation’s Terms of Reference were published on 15 September 2025 and are available at the following link:
The Chair of the Investigation, Baroness Amos, engaged with families on their development.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
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 consult (a) the Maternity Safety Alliance and (b) other bereaved families’ groups as part of the national maternity review.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
On 23 June 2025, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced an independent investigation into National Health Service maternity and neonatal services to understand the systemic issues behind why so many women, babies and families experience unacceptable care.
He has held a series of meetings with harmed and bereaved families from across the country, and has committed to ensuring the voices of women and families are at the heart of improving standards.
On 14 August 2025, he announced the appointment of Baroness Amos as Chair of the Independent Maternity and Neonatal Investigation. Baroness Amos was selected after feedback from bereaved families who expressed a preference for someone with distance from the NHS.
Baroness Amos’ investigation will put families at the heart of the work and affected families were asked to provide input to the draft terms of reference of the investigation. These have been developed to focus on understanding the experiences of affected women and families, identifying lessons learned and driving the improvements needed to ensure high quality and safe maternity and neonatal care across England.
The Government is also establishing a National Maternity and Neonatal Taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to be made up of a panel of experts and family, charity and staff representatives.
The taskforce will use the recommendations from the independent investigation to develop a national plan to drive improvements across maternity and neonatal care, and will work closely with families in developing the action plan, ensuring their voices are central to this work.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he plans to respond to The Hughes Report: Options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh, published on 7 February 2024.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is carefully considering the work by the Patient Safety Commissioner and her Report, which set out options for redress for those harmed by valproate and pelvic mesh. This is a complex issue involving input from different government departments. The Government will provide a further update to the Patient Safety Commissioner’s Report.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether (a) his Department and (b) ICBs have issued guidance to larger GP practices with multiple sites across several ICB areas.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Integrated care boards (ICBs), as commissioners of primary medical services, are responsible for the quality, safety, and performance of services delivered by providers within their areas. Large general practitioner (GP) practices spanning multiple commissioner areas will ordinarily hold individual contracts within each commissioning area they operate in and will therefore be held to account for the quality, safety, and performance of services by the responsible commissioner in each area.
The Department does not collect information on all guidance that is issued by ICBs.
Asked by: Mims Davies (Conservative - East Grinstead and Uckfield)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, when he expects the rapid national investigation into NHS maternity and neonatal services to make its initial set of recommendations.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In June 2025, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care announced an independent investigation into National Health Service maternity and neonatal services, which will be chaired by Baroness Amos.
The investigation will produce an initial set of national recommendations by December 2025. These recommendations will take previous recommendations into consideration and will therefore take primacy over previous recommendations.