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Written Question
Breast Cancer: Medical Treatments
Thursday 30th March 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what estimate his Department has made of the number of breast cancer treatments potentially affected by the proposed £20 million budget impact test.

Answered by Baroness Blackwood of North Oxford

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence estimates that around 80% of technologies appraised between June 2015 and June 2016 fell below the level of the proposed budget impact test. The level of the budget impact test does not represent a maximum that the National Health Service will spend on an individual drug in any year, but represents the point at which NHS England will seek to agree a commercial agreement with the drug company.


Written Question
NHS: Waste Disposal
Tuesday 28th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what advice is given to patients and families of deceased patients who no longer require prescribed medicines, aids and medical equipment.

Answered by David Mowat

Disposal of waste medicines is an essential service within the community pharmacy contractual framework, to be provided by all community pharmacies in England. NHS England is responsible for commissioning National Health Service pharmaceutical services.

Patients are normally advised to return unused medicines to their local community pharmacy for safe disposal. This is the case also for patients and families of deceased patients who no longer require prescribed medicines.

Appliances are normally collected by community nurses. Occasionally there is a local amnesty with appeals to patients to return equipment, for example crutches and wheelchairs to accident and emergency departments.


Written Question
Nurses: Recruitment
Thursday 9th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve recruitment of nurses to the NHS.

Answered by Philip Dunne

Health Education England (HEE) is responsible for the forecasting and planning of the future nursing workforce supply needs for the National Health Service.

HEE has increased nurse training commissions by nearly 15% over the last three years and is forecasting that up to 40,000 additional nurses could be available to the NHS by 2020.

In addition to the increase in training commissions HEE has also implemented a number of steps to increase nurse numbers within the NHS these include:

- proactively promoting the Return to Practice programme, aimed at encouraging previously qualified nurses that have left the NHS, to update their skills and qualifications and return to practice within the NHS;

- the provision of flexible routes into nursing for pre-existing support staff; and

- working closely with universities to improve attrition rates from courses which will further increase the number of nursing students who graduate.


Written Question
General Practitioners
Thursday 9th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the sustainability of the GP network.

Answered by David Mowat

The General Practice Forward View, published in April 2016, announced that investment in General Practice will increase from £9.6 billion in 2015/16 to over £12 billion by 2020/21, a major financial investment to transform primary care.

Work is underway to increase the primary care workforce and reduce workload, to improve primary care estates and infrastructure, and to redesign care and spread innovation throughout the country.

It is also becoming increasingly normal for general practices to work together at scale in networks or federation of practices, bringing greater opportunities for practices to work collaboratively to strengthen services and their sustainability.


Written Question
General Practitioners: Finance
Thursday 9th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much of the funding that has been allocated to the GP Development Programme remains unspent.

Answered by David Mowat

The General Practice Development programme covers a number of initiatives set out in the General Practice Forward View, including: £6 million for practice manager development, which runs over three years; £45 million for reception and clerical training, which runs over five years; £30 million for a national development programme, which runs over three years; and £45 million for online consultations, which will run over three years from 2017/18.

NHS England is working to spend up to allocation and final outturn figures will be published later in year in the NHS England accounts for 2016/17 with more detail provided in the Investment in General Practice Report for 2016/17 published by NHS Digital.


Written Question
Pharmacy
Thursday 9th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of better use of pharmacies on the healthcare provision to local communities.

Answered by David Mowat

Pharmacies are an important source of care, providing services such as flu jabs, health checks and of course dispensing vital medicines. We are transforming how pharmacists and their teams operate in the community - making the most of their skills to meet urgent medicine needs, treat minor ailments and ensure patients receive the best care. Healthy Living Pharmacies across the country with qualified health champions are demonstrating innovative models of delivery, reaching out to their local communities and making a real difference to people’s health.

To make even greater use of this important asset, the Murray Review of community pharmacy clinical services recommended that NHS England and its national partners should consider how best to support Sustainability and Transformation Plans in integrating community pharmacy into those plans. Public Health England published a menu of preventative interventions for the Sustainability and Transformation Plans in November 2016, which outlined evidence-based public health and preventative interventions that can help to improve the health of the population and reduce health and care services demand in the short to medium term. That menu specifically identified that pharmacy can make a contribution to:

- Cardiovascular disease secondary prevention;

- Improving the management of patients with blood pressure;

- Delivering effective brief advice on physical activity as part of everyday clinical care;

- Raising public awareness about reducing the risk of dementia;

- Providing support to stop smoking; and

- Reducing alcohol consumption and harm through brief advice.


Written Question
General Practitioners: Devon
Wednesday 8th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress the Government has made on recruiting more GPs in (a) Devon and (b) Plymouth.

Answered by David Mowat

The General Practice Forward View (GPFV), published in April 2016, sets out that the Government is investing an extra £2.4 billion a year nationally for general practice services by 2020/21, with the set aim to have an extra 5,000 doctors working in general practice in England by 2020.

NHS England’s South West Development Fund is being used to implement the GPFV locally, with a team of change managers – including one in Plymouth – in place to support practices and make them more sustainable and attractive to new doctors. In addition, Health Education England’s south west team has been active in promoting general practice as a career both by working with national incentives and addressing local opportunities.


Written Question
General Practitioners: Migrant Workers
Wednesday 8th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what systems his Department plans to put in place to support the recruitment of GPs from abroad.

Answered by David Mowat

The General Practice Forward View (GPFV), published in April 2016, includes a commitment to deliver a major international recruitment drive to attract at least 500 appropriately trained and qualified general practitioners from overseas by 2020.

Following publication of the GPFV, NHS England’s general practice workforce team has been engaging with regional and local National Health Service teams, Health Education England, and other stakeholders, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association, to agree an approach for delivering the commitment. These different stakeholders have agreed that the programme will be locally led and delivered with national oversight, co-ordination and support by the national general practice workforce team.

Each overseas recruitment project will be expected to satisfy a set of national principles; the national principles are set out at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/gp/gpfv/workforce/international-gp-recruitment/national-principles/

The contracts and support packages for international doctors recruited into general practices will vary across the country, to be tailored to the opportunities and needs of the local health system. A budget of up to £20 million has been identified to support schemes up to 2020.


Written Question
Capita: Dental Services
Wednesday 8th February 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that Capita improves its performance relating to the processing of dental performer list applications.

Answered by David Mowat

NHS England is meeting with Capita on a weekly basis to oversee the delivery of its plans for the Dental Performers Lists and other key services and to ensure the right improvements are in place to address the backlogs and delays.

My hon. Friend, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Public Health and Innovation (Nicola Blackwood), continues to work directly with Capita and NHS England to ensure that services are restored to an acceptable and sustainable standard.


Written Question
Pharmacy: Negligence
Thursday 12th January 2017

Asked by: Oliver Colvile (Conservative - Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport)

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when his Department plans to bring forward legislative proposals to stop pharmacists from facing criminal prosecution for making prescription errors.

Answered by David Mowat

We remain fully committed to making this change. We have consulted on our proposals to put in place a defence to the criminal sanction for inadvertent dispensing errors and received good support from patients, carers, healthcare professionals, pharmacy organisations and other bodies. We are working through the necessary processes to change the law. We are in the final stages of clearance and hope to lay the Order shortly.