Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Autumn Budget 2024, published on 30 October 2024, HC 295, what estimate he has made of the amount of funding that will be allocated to NHS services in Essex in each of the next five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The recent Budget set out the overall funding for the Department for 2024/25 and 2025/26. In terms of the next five years, the funding that will be allocated to the three integrated care boards covering Essex will be set out alongside planning guidance for 2025/26 at the earliest opportunity. Funding beyond 2025/26 will be determined as part of Phase 2 of the Spending Review, which will be announced in Spring 2025.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding he plans to allocate to public health grants for local authorities in each of the next five years.
Answered by Andrew Gwynne - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We will confirm 2025/26 public health grant allocations later this year, and will confirm future years’ allocations following the upcoming Spending Review in Spring 2025.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to increase the number of GPs in Essex.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom
We are working with NHS England to increase the general practice (GP) workforce in England as a whole, which includes Essex. This includes measures to boost recruitment, address the reasons why doctors leave the profession, and encourage them to return to practice.
We have increased the number of GP training places and in 2022 saw the highest ever number of doctors accepting a place in GP training, a record 4,032 trainees, up from 2,671 in 2014. Under the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan, the number of training places will rise to 6,000 by 2031/32, with the first 500 new places becoming available from September 2025.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of enabling pharmacy students to utilise the NHS learning support fund.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
There are no immediate plans to make changes to the Learning Support Fund scheme design. The Government keeps the funding arrangements for all healthcare students under close review. At all times the Government must strike a balance between the level of support students receive, and the need to make best use of public funds to deliver value for money.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she (a) has reviewed and (b) plans to review the (i) provision and (ii) location of (A) inpatient and (B) outpatient health services in Essex.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
No formal reviews have been undertaken by the Department. Inpatient and outpatient health services in Essex are provided by the Mid and South Essex Integrated Care Board (ICB), Suffolk and North East Essex ICB, and the Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB. Further information of specific service provision is available at the following link:
Local provision of services is determined by the ICBs, rather than directly by the Government, and decisions are made based on population need in the area. The Department is expanding diagnostic capacity across the National Health Service by rolling out more community diagnostic centres (CDCs), delivering vital tests, scans, and checks. With 154 CDCs open already, and up to 160 set to open by March 2025, these offer millions of patients the chance to access quicker, more convenient checks outside of hospitals, with capacity prioritised for cancer. Across all three ICBs in Essex, we have opened five CDCs in the past year, with another location approved by the Department.
We are also increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs, focusing on providing high volume, low complexity surgery, as recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. There are currently 100 elective surgical hubs that are operational across England, including the Braintree Community Hospital in Essex, as of February 2024. These surgical hubs will help separate elective care facilities from urgent and emergency care.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress has been made on the Lampard Inquiry into mental health services in Essex.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Baroness Lampard, the Chair of the Inquiry, undertook a consultation on proposed amendments to the terms of reference for the inquiry in November 2023. Through this consultation, families and other stakeholders had the opportunity to outline their views on the proposed terms of reference. The Chair has submitted her proposed terms of reference for the statutory inquiry, and my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care will make a decision in due course.
On 5 December 2023, my Rt hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care agreed to meet with families and local MPs in Essex, to discuss the terms of reference. A meeting will be arranged in due course.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's press release entitled '£200 million to boost NHS resilience and care this winter', published 14 September 2023, if he will provide additional resources to local authorities to support hospital discharge and reablement services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
This Government is investing an additional £600 million this year, and £1 billion next year through the Discharge Fund. This funding will enable the National Health Service and local authorities to reduce discharge delays, including by commissioning additional packages of care and support for rehabilitation and reablement.
In September, alongside the £200 million to boost resilience in the NHS, we announced a £40 million fund, targeted at local authorities in the most challenged NHS systems. This fund will strengthen urgent and emergency care resilience and performance this winter by preventing avoidable admissions or by reducing discharge delays.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
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 preparedness of the NHS in Essex for winter 2023-24; and how much additional funding his Department plans to provide to NHS services in Essex for winter 2023-24.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
No such assessment has been made, as local winter resilience plans and resourcing are an operational matter for the National Health Service. National Health Service winter planning at a national level started earlier this year than in previous years. The urgent and emergency care recovery plan was published in January 2023 and included £1 billion of dedicated funding. In April we distributed £600 million discharge funding to local authorities and the NHS to support increased capacity in community care and social care to enable earlier discharges from hospital and avoid unnecessary admissions. In July 2023, NHS England wrote to integrated care boards, trusts and primary care networks to set out a national approach to 2023/24 winter planning and the key steps to be taken across all parts of the system to meet the challenges expected from winter pressures.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) guidance his Department issues and (b) processes are in place to help prevent patient addiction to prescription medicines.
Answered by Will Quince
In March 2023, NHS England published ‘Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: framework for action’. It aims to further reduce inappropriate prescribing of high-strength painkillers and other addiction-causing medicines, like opioids and benzodiazepines, where they may no longer be the most clinically appropriate treatment for patients, and in some cases can become harmful without intervention.
NHS England provides support to integrated care boards and primary care as the Framework is implemented, through: national medicines optimisation opportunities for the National Health Service in 2023/24, which include opportunities for reducing opioid use in chronic non-cancer pain, and addressing inappropriate antidepressant prescribing; the Medicines Safety Improvement Programme, in partnership with the Patient Safety Collaboratives across England, is supporting other NHS teams to work with patients to reduce long term opioid use; annual investment of £2.3 billion until 2024 in mental health services and NHS Talking Therapies; a national programme to ensure social prescribing is an option for patients, as well as funding for social prescribers through the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme; support for delivering Structured Medication Reviews (SMR), including those on medicines associated with dependence and withdrawal symptoms; academic Health Science Network (AHSN) training on delivering SMRs; AHSN patient facing materials; and guidance published by NHS England on Structured Medication Review and Medicines Optimisation.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make (a) an estimate of the cost to and (b) an assessment of the impact on health services of addiction to prescription drugs in each of the last five years.
Answered by Will Quince
The information requested is not held. There are primary care codes (SNOMED CT) that can be used by primary care teams to record the physical and mental symptoms associated with dependence and withdrawal from prescribed drugs, although there are challenges in linking symptom and diagnostic data with prescribed medicines use.
However, in March 2023, NHS England published ‘Optimising personalised care for adults prescribed medicines associated with dependence or withdrawal symptoms: framework for action’. The framework sets out the scale of and change to prescribing of five medicines associated with dependence over time. Other sources of data such as Openprescribing also enable variation and comparisons in prescribing to be reviewed at different system levels, such as integrated care board, primary care network or practice level.