Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of the progress made by NHS trusts in moving health care assistants from band two to band three for the pay bands that were introduced in July 2021.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No new pay bands were introduced in July 2021. The NHS Staff Council, which has representatives from both employers and trade unions, agreed minor wording amendments to the profiles for band 2 and band 3 Healthcare Support Worker roles in August 2021. The profile levels and scores were not changed.
However, the clarifying amendments to the profiles led to some rebanding requests. This is a local matter and it is the responsibility of every employing organisation to ensure their staff are correctly evaluated and paid in accordance. For that reason, no assessment has been or will be made.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
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 providing additional funding to NHS trusts to meet the increased pay costs for health care assistants arising from the introduction of higher pay bands in July 2021.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No new pay bands were introduced in July 2021. The NHS Staff Council, which has representatives from both employers and trade unions, agreed minor wording amendments to the profiles for band 2 and band 3 Healthcare Support Worker roles in August 2021. The profile levels and scores were not changed.
However, the clarifying amendments to the profiles led to some rebanding requests. This is a local matter and it is the responsibility of every employing organisation to ensure their staff are correctly evaluated and paid in accordance. For that reason, no assessment has been or will be made.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the financial impact of the higher pay bands for health care assistants introduced in July 2021 on NHS trusts.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
No new pay bands were introduced in July 2021. The NHS Staff Council, which has representatives from both employers and trade unions, agreed minor wording amendments to the profiles for band 2 and band 3 Healthcare Support Worker roles in August 2021. The profile levels and scores were not changed.
However, the clarifying amendments to the profiles led to some rebanding requests. This is a local matter and it is the responsibility of every employing organisation to ensure their staff are correctly evaluated and paid in accordance. For that reason, no assessment has been or will be made.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what guidance her Department issues for NHS Trusts on carbon reduction planning; and if she will publish guidance for trusts on offsetting carbon emissions.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Health and Care Act (2022) empowered NHS England to issue statutory guidance on decarbonisation to National Health Service trusts and integrated care Boards. The following guidance has been issued through that power: Delivering a Net Zero National Health Service report, which sets a Net Zero target of 2040 for the NHS carbon footprint, and covers offsetting; and the Net Zero Supplier Roadmap, which aims to decarbonise NHS procurement.
All 212 NHS trusts have Green Plans in place setting out how they will meet the ambitions set out in this guidance. The Government continues to provide significant financial support to this work, including investing over £800 million in grant funding through the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to page 67 of the People at the Heart of Care white paper, published in December 2021, whether it remains her Department's policy that the remainder of the funding to support the adult social care workforce will be allocated in 2024.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is fully committed to the 10-year vision for adult social care set out in the People at the Heart of Care white paper. We want care to be outstanding quality, personalised and accessible. The social care workforce remains at the heart of our reform plans. Our vision is for an adult social care workforce where people feel supported, recognised, and have opportunities to develop and progress. Our workforce reforms will provide the workforce with more support to develop and progress within their careers and will improve the quality, safety, and personalisation of care.
The Next Steps to put People at the Heart of Care plan, published in April 2023, set out how we are investing up to £700 million over this year and next, building on over £100 million already invested in 2022/23. This included substantial investment on workforce reform including a new care workforce pathway, a new level 2 qualification, investment in apprenticeships and funding to pay for thousands of learning and development courses for social care staff. Since then, we have announced an additional £570 million funding boost for local authorities to make tangible improvements to adult social care workforce capacity, including to boost care worker pay.
Despite some delays, we are making good progress and have recently announced the launch of the Pathway, Apprenticeship fund and the specification for the qualification as well as some additional funding for social care staff learning and development. We remain committed to the delivery of the whole programme.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many and what proportion of clinical trials have been available for brain tumour patients each year since 2020; and whether he has made an estimate of the number of brain tumour patients that have been able to undergo trials during this same period.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department-funded National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Clinical Research Network (CRN) supports patients, the public and health and care organisations across England to participate in high-quality research. The following table shows the number of brain tumour studies on the NIHR CRN Portfolio in each year since 2020 in England:
Year | 2019/20 | 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 |
Number of brain tumour studies* supported by NIHR CRN open to recruitment | 52 | 55 | 61 | 61 |
Number of participants recruited | 4,102 | 1,105 | 3,368 | 4,317 |
Source: NIHR
Note: this includes observational studies and interventional studies, including clinical trials
We are not aware that brain tumour patients are routinely being excluded from other types of studies, however, we know that sometimes people are automatically excluded from taking part and this can be for good reasons. When designing research studies, researchers consider inclusion and exclusion criteria carefully to ensure they are not unnecessarily excluding specific groups who would benefit from the outcome of their study. However, we are aware that inclusion/exclusion criteria can disproportionally exclude individuals from specific groups for example older adults or pregnant women. The Health Research Authority (HRA) is developing guidance to improve practices in this area. The improved guidance produced by the HRA will help researchers to consider if these people and any other groups may be unnecessarily excluded and consider putting measures in place to address this.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment she has made of the (a) quality and (b) consistency of support provided by NHS Trusts for bereaved parents following miscarriage or baby loss.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
In 2023/24, NHS England is investing £5.9 million nationally to support the delivery of daily bereavement care services for women and families who suffer pregnancy/baby loss and is growing the number of staff trained in bereavement care.
All parents experiencing a loss should be provided with safe and compassionate bereavement support that is responsive to their needs and choices. While we recognise that many units are working towards these standards, this standard of bereavement care provision needs to be consistent nationally.
We are also looking to improve access to and the quality of perinatal mental health care for mothers and their partners. There are now 35 Maternal Mental Health Services across England which provide psychological therapy for women experiencing mental health difficulties related to their maternity experience, including as a result of loss. Services are due to be implemented in every area of the country by March 2024.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the adequacy of improvements to the consistency of the implementation of fertility treatment guidelines in the last 12 months.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
As part of the first-year commitments in the Women’s Health Strategy, the Government published our in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) transparency tool on GOV.UK in July 2023. This tool compiles published integrated care board (ICB) policies on their local fertility treatment offer to keep track nationally of implementation progress.
As part of keeping the tool up to date, we will review ICBs’ local policy statements in 2024, to check on progress with the implementation of National Institute for Heath and Care Excellence fertility guidelines.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
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 application of non-clinical criteria in determining the suitability of candidates for IVF treatment.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Women’s Health Strategy was published on 20 July 2022 and contained several important changes and future ambitions to improve the variations in access to National Health Service-funded fertility services. We will be working with NHS England this year to assess fertility provision across integrated care boards, which have responsibility for commissioning fertility services, with a view to removing non-clinical access criteria.
Asked by: Sarah Owen (Labour - Luton North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many meetings were held between officials in her Department and representatives from NHS England on geographic variations in fertility treatment in the last year.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
There are regular meetings held between officials from NHS England and the Department as part of the Women’s Health Strategy commitment to address the current geographical variation in access to National Health Service-funded fertility services across England.