Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps are being taken to ensure patients who receive care at a surgical hub outside of their local area have access to follow-up treatment such as rehab in their locality.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.
The responsibility for ensuring that patients receive the right ongoing care sits with the trust whose care the patient is under. In addition, the Getting It Right First Time programme has set clear expectations that all surgical hubs should provide patients with information on how and where to access rehabilitation services post discharge, and this includes for patients returning home to a different system.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
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 tackle elective care waiting times including joint replacement surgery in (a) Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket and (b) nationally.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to putting patients first, nationally and in Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. This means making sure that patients, including those waiting for joint replacement surgery, are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.
Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket is predominantly served by the West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. Over half, or 50.9%, of patients on the trauma and orthopaedic waiting list, which includes joint replacement surgery, were waiting within 18 weeks, an improvement of 7.9% since July 2024, and the number waiting more than 52 weeks has also fallen by over 70%.
Nationally, the number of patients on trauma and orthopaedic waiting lists waiting within 18 weeks has improved by 3.6% and the number waiting more than 52 weeks has fallen by over 16,000 in the same period.
We set out in the 2025 Elective Reform Plan the productivity and reform efforts needed to reach the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment by March 2029. The plan outlines actions that will help to ensure care is delivered in the right place, and includes £1.65 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 to deliver new surgical hubs, diagnostic scanners, and beds to increase capacity for elective and emergency care.
Currently, there are 123 surgical hubs operational across England, including two in the Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care System, and we are committed to expanding the number of hubs over the next three years to increase surgical capacity and deliver faster access to common procedures, including trauma and orthopaedic procedures.
In December 2024, we opened the Newmarket Community Diagnostic Centre which increased diagnostic capacity, with over 34,000 scans conducted for more than 21,000 patients, and which led to a 53% reduction in the magnetic resonance imaging waiting list between December 2024 and October 2025. As of September 2025, community diagnostic centres are now delivering additional tests and checks in 170 sites. We have also confirmed 13 new state-of-the-art DEXA scanners to support better bone care, delivering on this Government’s commitment in the Elective Reform Plan. These will allow for an extra 29,000 bone scans per year, benefitting tens of thousands of patients.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will implement a formal mentoring programme for doctors.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are currently no plans for a central mentoring programme for doctors. Such programmes are provided by some National Health Service trusts, integrated care boards and Royal Colleges.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of falling birth rates on the sustainability of small rural primary schools; and what steps she is taking to ensure that these schools are (a) protected and (b) supported.
Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)
The department recognises the essential role that small, rural schools play in their communities. The national funding formula (NFF) accounts for the particular challenges faced by small schools in rural areas, namely, the impact of falling rolls, through the lump sum and sparsity factors. The NFF lump sum for the 2025/26 financial year is set at £145,100 and provides a fixed amount of funding that is unrelated to pupil-led factors. In addition, eligible primary schools attract up to £57,400, and eligible secondary or all-through schools attract up to £83,400, in sparsity funding in 2025/26 through the NFF.
Local authorities hold the statutory place planning function, ensuring there are sufficient schools in their area to meet the needs of pupils. It is for local authorities, in collaboration with academy trusts and other local partners, to balance the supply and demand of school places, in line with changing demographics, as they have done for many years.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
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 support early interventions in maternity care.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are rolling out several measures to support early interventions in maternity care.
These include implementing the Saving Babies’ Lives ‘Bundle’, which provides evidence-based guidance for providers of maternity care to help reduce adverse outcomes and optimise care; rolling out 14 Maternal Medicine Networks across England to ensure that women with chronic and acute medical problems around pregnancy have access to specialist care; and piloting Martha’s Rule in maternity and neonatal units in 14 Trusts in six regions.
In addition, we are developing a Maternal Care Bundle that will tackle the main causes of maternal death and harm, expected to be published this autumn. We are also launching a £50 million National Institute for Health Research challenge fund to task researchers with finding new ways to tackle maternity disparities and poor pregnancy outcomes.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the NHS Dispensing Fee for dispensing GP practices in the context of recent increases in employers’ National Insurance contributions.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
General practices (GPs) are valued independent contractors who provide over £13 billion worth of National Health Services. Every year we consult with the profession about what services GPs provide, and the money providers are entitled to in return under their contract, taking account of the cost of delivering services, including dispensing fees.
Dispensing practices receive a dispensing fee, approximately £2.00 to 2.50 per item, which is intended to cover dispensing costs. This fee is calculated based on the forecasted volumes of prescriptions to be dispensed and the size of the funding envelope, according to a methodology agreed by the Department, the General Practitioners Committee, NHS Employers, and the Welsh Government. An updated methodology was agreed between the British Medical Association and NHS England to address the issue of continuing fluctuation between over and underspend year on year, the alternating pattern of over and under spends, and implemented in October 2023.
We are investing an additional £1.1 billion in GPs to reinforce the front door of the NHS, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.4 billion in 2025/26, which is the biggest cash increase in over a decade. The 8.9% boost to the GP Contract in 2025/26 is greater than the 5.8% growth to the NHS budget as a whole.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress the General Dental Council has made on procuring a new examination board for the Overseas Registration Exam.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I have asked the General Dental Council (GDC) to present its action plan to reduce the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) waiting list in the autumn, when the GDC also expects to be able to announce the new contract provider for the ORE.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress the General Dental Council has made on developing an action plan to reduce the waiting list for the Overseas Registration Exam.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
I have asked the General Dental Council (GDC) to present its action plan to reduce the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) waiting list in the autumn, when the GDC also expects to be able to announce the new contract provider for the ORE.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what consultation her Department undertook on the potential impact of changes to the skilled worker route on the supply of (a) dental hygienists and (b) dental nurses.
Answered by Seema Malhotra - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
On 12 May, we published our Immigration White Paper ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’, outlining our future approach to legal migration routes. The first set of immigration rules giving effect to the policies in the White Paper was published on 1 July, including raising the skills threshold to RQF 6 and we will publish an impact assessment of this change in due course.
Asked by: Peter Prinsley (Labour - Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket)
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 General Medical Council on ensuring that doctors who are unwell seek professional help for their condition, in the context of the General Medical Council's decision to remove health as a specific grounds for action in fitness to practise investigations.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has committed to bringing forward legislation to modernise the regulation of doctors in the United Kingdom by the General Medical Council (GMC) in this Parliament. Government officials are working closely with the GMC and other stakeholders, and we expect to be in a position to consult on a draft legislative framework for the GMC, which will include proposed grounds for action in fitness to practice cases, by the end of 2025.
The GMC and all other healthcare professional regulators will continue to have a duty of care to any of their registrants who have physical or mental health concerns. This includes, where necessary, supporting them to work within a safe scope of practice. Healthcare professional regulators must ensure that any fitness to practice concerns relating to a health condition are handled sensitively and confidentially in a way that balances the rights and interests of the registrant with the need to ensure public protection.