Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an estimate of the number of people who have been admitted to hospital after losing their PIP in each month in the last three years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The information requested is not collected centrally.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 establish the National Care Service; and what his planned timeline is for (a) consultation with stakeholders and (b) implementation.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government has taken a critical first step towards a National Care Service by launching an independent commission into adult social care.
The commission will build national consensus to create a National Care Service that is productive, preventative, and gives people who draw on care, and their families and carers, more power in the system.
It will be for the independent commission to determine their approach, but we expect it will include engaging with a wide range of stakeholders, including people with lived experience and unpaid carers, as well as building cross-party consensus. Further details will be set out by the commission in due course.
In the short-term, we are laying the foundations for a National Care Service by introducing legislation for the first ever Fair Pay Agreement for the care workforce, expanding the first-ever national career structure for the adult social care workforce, digitising care providers, and setting new standards for care technologies.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent steps his Department has taken to improve access to NHS dentistry in Warrington South constituency; and what plans he has to increase the number of NHS dentists practising in Warrington.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to NHS dental care, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.
The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including NHS dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to the integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. For the Warrington South constituency, this is the NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB.
ICBs have been asked to start making extra urgent dental appointments available from April 2025. The NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB is expected to deliver 46,617 additional urgent dental appointments as part of the scheme.
ICBs have started to recruit posts through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see up to 240 dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 (a) waiting times and (b) access to phlebotomy services.
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.
We also recognise that care, including phlebotomy, should be more easily accessible, and located in the community where possible, which is more convenient for patients than going to hospital.
The Elective Reform Plan, published in January 2025, sets out the productivity and reform efforts needed to return to the 18-week constitutional standard by the end of this parliament. The plan commits to transform and expand diagnostic services and speed up waiting times for tests, a crucial part of reducing overall waiting times and returning to the RTT 18-week standard.
Community diagnostic centres (CDCs) are supporting one of the Government’s top priorities for health, to shift care from the hospital to the community. CDCs offer local populations a wide range of diagnostic tests, including phlebotomy, closer to home and greater choice on where and how they are undertaken whilst also reducing pressure on hospitals. Latest management information data shows that CDCs have delivered over 3.7 million phlebotomy tests since July 2021.
Healthcare services provided by general practice, including phlebotomy are commissioned locally by integrated care boards based on population need.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the (a) effectiveness and (b) value for money of modular hospital construction methods in delivering additional NHS capacity; and whether he has plans to increase the use of (i) modular and (ii) prefabricated buildings across the hospital estate.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
We recognise the benefits and opportunities of modern methods of construction (MMC), including modular construction, faster construction times, cost savings, minimised disruption, higher quality and safety standards, and the use of sustainable materials and methods.
A toolkit has been developed to support MMC opportunities in healthcare and is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/nhs-modern-methods-of-construction-assessment-tool-user-guide/
The NHS MMC assessment tool is recommended for use on all projects to inform the use of MMC of opportunities and is mandated for projects over £25 million to meet business case requirements of 70% new build and 50% refurbishment using MMC.
The New Hospital Programme is already transforming the way that hospital infrastructure is constructed by using a national standardised approach, called Hospital 2.0. Hospital 2.0 uses a standardised ‘kit of parts’ for hospital components, ranging from doors to full bathroom pods, that can be assembled into different size hospitals in an optimised, consistent, and repeatable way and with off-site manufacturing and assembly, reducing costs and accelerating construction. Taken together, MMC and Hospital 2.0 will accelerate the building process, improving productivity and maximising value for money.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy that all eligible patients with SOD1-related Motor Neurone Disease can access Tofersen.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body responsible for developing authoritative, evidence-based recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new medicines represent a clinically and cost-effective use of resources. The NHS in England is legally required to fund medicines recommended by NICE, normally within three months of the publication of final guidance.
NICE has selected tofersen for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis caused by SOD1 gene mutations as a topic for guidance development through its Highly Specialised Technology (HST) programme. The HST programme appraises medicines for the treatment of very rare, and often very severe diseases, and evaluates whether they can be considered a clinically and cost-effective use of NHS resources.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 his Department's work on reducing suicide rates includes measures to help those that have been reported missing.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The actions set out in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England will apply to missing people where relevant. However, we are not taking any specific actions targeted at measuring and reducing suicide rates among people reported missing.
As part of our mission to build a National Health Service fit for the future, we are committed to tackling suicides as one of the biggest killers, working closely with other government departments and agencies.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 monitor the correlation between trends in the number of people (a) going missing and (b) committing suicide.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The actions set out in the National Suicide Prevention Strategy for England will apply to missing people where relevant. However, we are not taking any specific actions targeted at measuring and reducing suicide rates among people reported missing.
As part of our mission to build a National Health Service fit for the future, we are committed to tackling suicides as one of the biggest killers, working closely with other government departments and agencies.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 potential implications for his policies of the Alzheimer’s Society’s report entitled Because we’re human too: Why dementia training for care workers matters, and how to deliver it, published on 13 November 2024; and if he will make it his policy that adult social care staff should have mandatory dementia training.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department welcomes knowledge sharing across the sector and officials will consider the report in future policy development. Under the Health and Social Care Act 2008, care providers are required to provide sufficient numbers of suitably qualified, competent, skilled, and experienced staff to meet the needs of the people using the service.
We now have a national career framework for adult social care, the Care Workforce Pathway, which is linked to several existing competency frameworks, including the dementia training standards framework. The Department developed the pathway in partnership with Skills for Care, representatives from the adult social care workforce, and people who draw on care and support.
The Department has also launched a new Level 2 Adult Social Care Certificate qualification which links to outcomes in the Care Workforce Pathway. This contains the baseline knowledge required to provide quality care and will make sure that those who are starting out their careers in care have an informed awareness of dementia.
Asked by: Sarah Hall (Labour (Co-op) - Warrington South)
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 ensure that NHS mental health services do not exclude anyone because of a neurological diagnosis.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Access to National Health Service mental health services is based on clinical need, including for patients with a neurological diagnosis.
More broadly, we know that too many people with mental health issues are not getting the support or care they need, which is why we will fix the broken system to ensure we give mental health the same attention and focus as physical health, and that people, including those with a neurological diagnosis, can be confident in accessing high quality mental health support when they need it.