Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment they have made of the potential impact of welfare reforms on people living with (a) bipolar and (b) other serious mental illnesses.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Work Capability Assessment is not working and needs to be reformed or replaced alongside a proper plan to help disabled people into work, which will help them, businesses and the economy.
We know that change is desperately needed but equally these sorts of changes should not be made in haste.
So, alongside our Get Britain Working White Paper, we want to engage with disabled people, and others with expertise and experience on these issues, to consider how to address these challenges and build a better system.
We will reconsult on the proposed WCA changes as part of our Green Paper before the Spring 2025 forecast that will bring forward wider proposals to reform the health and disability benefits system. The reforms will be subject to full consultation.
Asked by: Peter Dowd (Labour - Bootle)
Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps the Government is taking to ensure people with bipolar receive the support they need to (a) access and (b) stay in work.
Answered by Alison McGovern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Backed by £240m investment, the Get Britain Working White Paper launched on 26 November will drive forward approaches to tackling economic inactivity and work toward the long-term ambition of an 80% employment rate.
Employers play a key role in increasing employment opportunities and supporting disabled people and people with health conditions, to thrive as part of the workforce. Our support to employers includes increasing access to Occupational Health, a digital information service for employers and the Disability Confident scheme.
Appropriate work is generally good for health and wellbeing, so we want everyone to get work and get on in work, whoever they are and wherever they live.
Disabled people and people with health conditions, including people with bipolar disorder, are a diverse group so access to the right work and health support, in the right place, at the right time, is key. We therefore have a range of specialist initiatives to support individuals to stay in work and get back into work, including those that join up employment and health systems.
Measures include support from Work Coaches and Disability Employment Advisers in Jobcentres and Access to Work grants, as well as joining up health and employment support around the individual through Employment Advisors in NHS Talking Therapies and Individual Placement and Support in Primary Care.
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 for Work and Pensions:
To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of welfare support for people with bipolar.
Answered by Stephen Timms - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The extra costs disability benefits, Attendance Allowance, Disability Living Allowance and Personal Independence Payment (PIP), provide a contribution towards the extra costs that may arise from a long-term disability or health condition. These benefits are assessed on the basis of needs arising and not on the condition itself, so are available to those with bipolar disorder and other mood disorders when they meet the qualifying criteria.
The extra costs benefits are non-contributory, non-means-tested and can be worth over £9,500 a year, tax free. Individuals can choose how to use their benefit, in the light of their individual needs and preferences. They were not subject to the benefits freeze, were most recently uprated by 6.7 per cent from 8 April 2024 and, subject to Parliamentary approval, are due to be uprated by 1.7 per cent from April this year.
The benefits can also be paid in addition to any other financial or practical support someone may be entitled to such as Universal Credit, Employment and Support Allowance, NHS services, free prescriptions or help with travel costs to appointments. They can also attract additional support such as premiums and additional amounts paid within the income-related benefits, access to Carer’s Allowance, the Motability scheme and the Blue Badge scheme.
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.
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 is taking steps to improve the usage of sunscreen of factor 30 and above.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne
The Department would advise that people to the follow the National Health Service guidance on using sunscreen, which is available at the following link:
https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/seasonal-health/sunscreen-and-sun-safety/
The NHS England website is clear on the benefits of sunscreen, and the importance of using sunscreen that is of factor 30 and above.