Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 there are an adequate number of health professionals trained in (a) identifying and (b) supporting people affected by Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD).
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a very rare but rapidly progressive and fatal disease. Effective diagnostic and care services are important in ensuring that patients and their families get the support that they need. Unfortunately, there is no known cure for CJD. Treatment options focus on symptom control and palliative care.
Specialist diagnostic services are provided by the National CJD Research and Surveillance Unit. From April 2025, funding for these services is being transferred from the National Institute for Health and Care Research to NHS England.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what collaboration there is between NHS England, the National Institute for Health and Care Research and the Medical Research Council on Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease funding; and what assessment he has made of the potential impact of withdrawal of funding on (a) Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease and (b) prion disease research by those bodies.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department funds research through the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR). Since 2002, the Department has made over £43 million of funding available for research and surveillance of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and prion diseases.
The Department is working closely with NHS England on future funding for CJD diagnostic services. The Department also works closely with the Medical Research Council (MRC) to align funding for priority research, and has met specifically with the MRC Prion Unit recently.
Both the NIHR and the MRC welcome research proposals on all aspects of human health, including CJD and prion disease. Research applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 (a) support research into Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease and (b) ensure that UK research does not fall behind well-funded programmes in other countries.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department funds research through the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR). Since 2002, the Department has made over £43 million of funding available for research and surveillance of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and prion diseases.
The Department is working closely with NHS England on future funding for CJD diagnostic services. The Department also works closely with the Medical Research Council (MRC) to align funding for priority research, and has met specifically with the MRC Prion Unit recently.
Both the NIHR and the MRC welcome research proposals on all aspects of human health, including CJD and prion disease. Research applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money, and scientific quality.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 help support advances n CJD treatment.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) is a rapidly progressing neurodegenerative disease. As of yet, there is no cure. Treatment options focus on symptom control and palliative care.
The Department, via the National Institute for Health and Care Research, funds world-leading research to improve people’s health and wellbeing. The Department welcomes applications from specialist centres, and others, to explore advances in CJD treatment.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions on improving co-ordination between healthcare services and the welfare system to support people with bipolar.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Ministers hold discussions with other ministerial colleagues regularly, on a range of issues.
The Get Britain Working White Paper confirms the Government’s commitment to continuing to expand the number of places on Individual Placement Support schemes to help thousands more people with severe mental illness, including bipolar disorder, to find and stay in employment.
The White Paper also confirms our commitment to expand NHS Talking Therapies. Over 90% of NHS Talking Therapies services in England provide access to Employment Advisers with an aspiration that, by March 2025, 99% will offer employment support as part of their service.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 improve training for healthcare professionals to better (a) recognise and (b) diagnose bipolar.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The standard of training for general practitioners and other health care practitioners is the responsibility of the independent statutory regulatory bodies. They set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses, and higher education institutions, which write and teach the curricula that enables their students to meet the regulators’ outcome standards.
Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all nevertheless emphasize the skills and approaches a health care practitioner must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and appropriate treatment plans for their patients, including those with bipolar disorder.
Once qualified, health care practitioners are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up to date, and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This should include taking account of new research and guidance, such as that produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, to ensure that they can continue to provide high-quality care to all patients.
The community mental health framework sets out a vision for transforming community mental health services. The vision is a whole person, whole population approach to community health services, with new integrated models between primary and secondary care that can deliver more flexible, personalised, and holistic care, including diagnosis, for more people with severe mental illnesses such as bi-polar disorder, rather than developing specialist pathways for specific conditions.
Since April 2021, all areas have received significant additional, ring-fenced funding to develop these new integrated primary and community mental health services, built around primary care networks, in line with the community mental health framework. Local health systems have made significant progress in rolling out these integrated models of care, including for people with a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he plans to introduce specialist bipolar pathways in NHS mental health services.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The standard of training for general practitioners and other health care practitioners is the responsibility of the independent statutory regulatory bodies. They set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses, and higher education institutions, which write and teach the curricula that enables their students to meet the regulators’ outcome standards.
Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all nevertheless emphasize the skills and approaches a health care practitioner must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and appropriate treatment plans for their patients, including those with bipolar disorder.
Once qualified, health care practitioners are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up to date, and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This should include taking account of new research and guidance, such as that produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, to ensure that they can continue to provide high-quality care to all patients.
The community mental health framework sets out a vision for transforming community mental health services. The vision is a whole person, whole population approach to community health services, with new integrated models between primary and secondary care that can deliver more flexible, personalised, and holistic care, including diagnosis, for more people with severe mental illnesses such as bi-polar disorder, rather than developing specialist pathways for specific conditions.
Since April 2021, all areas have received significant additional, ring-fenced funding to develop these new integrated primary and community mental health services, built around primary care networks, in line with the community mental health framework. Local health systems have made significant progress in rolling out these integrated models of care, including for people with a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 improve early diagnosis of bipolar.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The standard of training for general practitioners and other health care practitioners is the responsibility of the independent statutory regulatory bodies. They set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses, and higher education institutions, which write and teach the curricula that enables their students to meet the regulators’ outcome standards.
Whilst not all curricula may necessarily highlight a specific condition, they all nevertheless emphasize the skills and approaches a health care practitioner must develop in order to ensure accurate and timely diagnoses and appropriate treatment plans for their patients, including those with bipolar disorder.
Once qualified, health care practitioners are responsible for ensuring their own clinical knowledge remains up to date, and for identifying learning needs as part of their continuing professional development. This should include taking account of new research and guidance, such as that produced by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, to ensure that they can continue to provide high-quality care to all patients.
The community mental health framework sets out a vision for transforming community mental health services. The vision is a whole person, whole population approach to community health services, with new integrated models between primary and secondary care that can deliver more flexible, personalised, and holistic care, including diagnosis, for more people with severe mental illnesses such as bi-polar disorder, rather than developing specialist pathways for specific conditions.
Since April 2021, all areas have received significant additional, ring-fenced funding to develop these new integrated primary and community mental health services, built around primary care networks, in line with the community mental health framework. Local health systems have made significant progress in rolling out these integrated models of care, including for people with a diagnosis of bi-polar disorder.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 promote awareness of skin cancer (a) prevention measures, (b) signs and (c) symptoms.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The Department continues to advise patients to follow National Health Service guidance on reducing the risk of skin cancer. This advice is available publicly on the National Health Service website, at the following link:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/melanoma-skin-cancer/
The Department is not taking any additional steps, currently or within the last three years, to specifically fund skin cancer awareness campaigns.
NHS England run Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and address the barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms as well as encouraging body awareness to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an earlier point.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
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 sunbed usage by adults.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment (COMARE) published a report on the health effects and risks arising from sunbeds in 2009. This report included a chapter on sunbed use in the United Kingdom, and informed the 2010 Sunbeds (Regulation) Act.
In November 2024, the Department commissioned COMARE to consider the available evidence relating to the use of sunbeds in the UK, and to determine if a new review is required. This work is ongoing, and its conclusions will be made publicly available when completed.