Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department has made a recent assessment of the potential merits of developing a cross-departmental strategy to tackle alcohol harm.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government takes a wide-ranging approach to addressing alcohol-related harms, including through taking forward the commitments set out in Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s, to increase the availability of no- and low-alcohol alternatives, establish alcohol care teams in the 25% of acute hospitals in England with the greatest need as part of the NHS Long Term Plan, and improve the alcohol and drug treatment system through the 10-year Drug Strategy.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will meet charities representing people affected by alcohol harm to inform her Department’s work on health prevention.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department meets regularly with alcohol charity representatives, at a ministerial and official level, and is content to continue to do so, to support and inform our work in tackling alcohol related health harms.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, what estimate he has made of the total amount of revenue raised by local authorities via the use of debt recovery agencies in the last 12 months.
Answered by Simon Hoare - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Government does not collect data on the different collection methods used by councils, or the revenues collected by them. The Government does however publish data on the overall amounts of council tax and business rates collected and the total arrears for each financial year. This data is available here.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
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 is to receive results from a colonoscopy in (a) Stepping Hill Hospital and (b) Greater Manchester.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The data requested is not currently collected by either Stockport NHS Foundation Trust Stepping Hill Hospital, or by the Greater Manchester Integrated Care Board.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of (a) diagnosis and (b) treatment services for bowel cancer at Stepping Hill hospital.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No specific assessment has been made of the adequacy of diagnosis and treatment services for bowel cancer at Stepping Hill Hospital. However, data held at the provider level can give us insight into lower gastrointestinal (GI) cancer for Stockport NHS Foundation Trust. Of those patients referred to Stockport NHS Foundation Trust for suspected lower GI cancer in February 2024, 86.1% received a diagnosis or ruling out of cancer within 28 days. This is above the 75.0% standard, and shows an increase of 4.2% since January. Furthermore, of those patients referred to Stockport NHS Foundation Trust for lower GI cancer in February 2024, 95.2% received a first or subsequent treatment within 31 days of a decision to treat. This is above national performance of 91.1%, against the standard of 96.0%. For lower GI cancer in the same period, 67.4% of patients received treatment within 62 days of an urgent suspected cancer or screening referral, or consultant upgrade, to a first definitive treatment for cancer. This is above national performance of 63.9% against the standard of 85.0%.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many and what proportion of applicants refused asylum did not appeal that decision in the last 12 months.
Answered by Tom Pursglove - Minister of State (Minister for Legal Migration and Delivery)
The requested information cannot be accurately extracted from our internal systems. To provide this information would require a manual trawl of asylum refusal decisions and to do so would incur disproportionate cost.
It might be helpful to explain that data on asylum outcomes is published as part of the Immigration Statistics at Immigration system statistics data tables - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Tab Asy_D02 of the Asylum and Resettlement tables contains data on asylum refusal decisions. Data on appeal volumes is published by HM Courts and Tribunals Service on a quarterly basis. The latest publication can be found at Tribunals statistics quarterly: October to December 2023 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). Table FIA_1 of the Main Tables section shows asylum and protection appeal volumes data to 31 December 2023.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of increases in the cost of living on the accessibility of higher education for students in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
The government publishes an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) is each year to analyse the impact of changes to higher education (HE) student support in England on students with protected characteristics and those from low-income families. The EIA for the 2024/25 academic year was published on GOV.UK on 26 January 2024 and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-student-finance-2024-to-2025-equality-analysis.
The department has continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living and other costs for undergraduate and postgraduate students each year with a 2.8% increase for the current academic year, 2023/24, and a further 2.5% increase announced for 2024/25.
In addition, the department has frozen maximum tuition fees for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. By 2024/25, maximum fees will have been frozen for seven successive years. The department believes that the current fee freeze achieves the best balance between ensuring that the system remains financially sustainable, offering good value for the taxpayer, and reducing debt levels for students in real terms.
The government understands the pressures people have been facing with the cost of living and has taken action to help. The department has already made £276 million of student premium and mental health funding available for the 2023/24 academic year to support successful outcomes for students including disadvantaged students.
The department has also made a further £10 million of one-off support available to support student mental health and hardship funding for 2023/24. This funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes. For this financial year, 2024/25, the department has increased the Student Premium (full-time, part-time, and disabled premium) by £5 million to reflect high demand for hardship support. Further details of this allocation for the academic year 2024/25 will be announced by the Office for Students (OfS) in the summer.
Overall, support to households to help with the high cost of living is worth £108 billion over 2022/23 to 2024/25, an average of £3,800 per UK household. The government believes this will have eased the pressure on family budgets and so will in turn enable many families to provide additional support to their children in HE to help them meet increased living costs.
English domiciled 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged areas are now 74% more likely to enter HE than they were in 2010, and the department is working to close the disadvantage gap with our access and participation reforms.
The department has tasked the OfS to include support for disadvantaged students before entry to HE in new access and participation plans. Providers should be working meaningfully with schools to ensure that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are encouraged and supported to achieve the highest possible grades and follow the path that is best for them, whether that be an apprenticeship or higher technical qualification, or a course at another university.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress the Medical Devices Outcome Registry Programme has made on centralising NHS England clinical registries.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medical Device Outcome Registry, National Joint Registry, and National Vascular Registry have been incorporated into a central software platform. Registries for ongoing migration are the legacy NHS Digital Breast and Cosmetic Implant Registry, and the Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Stress Urinary Incontinence Registries. The National Registry of Hearing Implants (Cochlear) and National Major Trauma Registry are new registries in development. As of 26 March 2024, 69 providers have been onboarded to the Medical Device Outcome Registry.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, which of the 37 established NHS clinical registries have been incorporated onto a central software platform.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medical Device Outcome Registry, National Joint Registry, and National Vascular Registry have been incorporated into a central software platform. Registries for ongoing migration are the legacy NHS Digital Breast and Cosmetic Implant Registry, and the Pelvic Organ Prolapse and Stress Urinary Incontinence Registries. The National Registry of Hearing Implants (Cochlear) and National Major Trauma Registry are new registries in development. As of 26 March 2024, 69 providers have been onboarded to the Medical Device Outcome Registry.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what data his Department holds on (a) expected future rail passenger demand and (b) the potential factors affecting future rail passenger demand.
Answered by Huw Merriman - Minister of State (Department for Transport)
In line with our published guidance, the Department has developed a range of rail demand forecasts in both the medium and long term. The Department considers a wide range of evidence for our project appraisals and policy decisions.
There are many economic and socio-demographic factors which potentially affect future rail passenger demand. These are detailed within the Department’s Transport Analysis Guidance, published online.