Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many and what proportion of breast radiologist posts were unfilled in each of the last five years for which data is available.
Answered by Philip Dunne
The Department does not collect this information.
National Health Service organisations are best placed to decide how many staff they employ tailoring services to meet the needs of their patients and local communities, to deliver safe care.
Health Education England is responsible for ensuring a secure workforce supply that reflects the needs of local service users, providers and commissioners of healthcare. As part of the investment planning process, clinical radiologists have been prioritised with plans to increase training posts by 32 to 1,144 for 2016-17 recruitment.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, what steps she plans to take in response to the most recent HM Inspectorate of Prisons report on HMP Chelmsford; and if she will make a statement.
Answered by Sam Gyimah
HM Inspectorate of Prisons’ report on HMP Chelmsford was published on 16 August this year. We take all recommendations made by the Chief Inspector seriously and the prison is taking action to address the Chief Inspector’s findings. We will produce a detailed action plan within three months responding to all the recommendations in the report. The action plan will be published on the Inspectorate’s web site.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Cabinet Office:
To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what steps he is taking to implement efficiency savings across government departments.
Answered by Matt Hancock
In May 2010 the deficit between government revenue and public spending was the largest percentage of GDP of any developed country. As part of our long-term economic plan to ensure the country lives within its means, we took action to drive efficiency from day one.
By 2014/15 the Government had saved £18.6 billion through efficiency and reform, and tackling fraud, error and uncollected debt (against a 2009/10 baseline). At a very conservative estimate this is equivalent to £850 for each working household across Britain.
The £18.6 billion saving includes £6.1 billion by improving how government buys goods and services and £1.5 billion by transforming how government works, including putting services and transactions online and rationalising the government’s property portfolio - releasing government land, by moving to shared property and using less office space, enables land to be released which can be put to better economic use.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps his Department is taking to help protect heritage sites worldwide.
Answered by Lord Vaizey of Didcot
The protection of cultural heritage affected by acts of destruction is a priority for this Government. We are committing £30 million towards a new Cultural Protection Fund and will bring forward legislation to enable the UK to ratify the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict and its two Protocols at the first opportunity.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, when he expects HM Courts and Tribunals Service to send to the Department for Work and Pensions the Statement of Reasons in respect of the recent appeal, Ref: SC133/14/00156, relating to Ms C Ely; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Shailesh Vara
The First-tier Tribunal - Social Security and Child Support, administered by HM Courts & Tribunals Service hears appeals against Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) decisions on a range of benefits.
The Tribunal heard the appeal brought by Ms Ely on 27 April. A request for a full statement of reasons was received from the DWP on 15 May.
The Tribunal’s Procedure Rules require the statement of reasons to be provided within one month of the request or as soon as practicable thereafter.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many finished consultant episodes there were with a (a) primary and (b) secondary diagnosis of HIV infection in (i) England and (ii) each region in each year since 1989.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Available data is set out in the attached table. This includes data for England from 1998 and regional data from 2003.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to develop the understanding, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of HIV among NHS clinicians who do not specialise in HIV; what assessment he has made of the adequacy and extent of training on HIV for such clinicians; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Health Education England has developed a number of e-learning sessions on Sexual Health and HIV across programmes designed for foundation trainees, general practitioners, dentists, radiologists as well as specialists. The programmes cover topics such as HIV testing, the importance of early diagnosis and Oral Manifestations of HIV and AIDS. The content for these programmes is available to all National Health Service employees irrespective of their speciality and includes e-learning resources.
The Department has funded the Medical Foundation for AIDS and Sexual Health to produce resources to support non-specialist clinicians in primary and secondary care services to offer HIV testing to help reduce late diagnosis of HIV. This includes HIV Testing in Practice, an interactive web-based resource for primary care which went live in November 2014.
NHS England commission HIV treatment and care services in-line with a detailed service specification. Non-specialist clinical services, including primary care might be able to deliver parts of the care pathway in discussion with specialist HIV care providers.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, with reference to Public Health England's report on HIV in the UK, published in November 2014, what the evidential basis was of the conclusions in the report; from what sources that data was derived; how frequently such data is published; and when data equivalent to that data will next be published.
Answered by Jane Ellison
Public Health England (PHE) undertakes surveillance of the number of people newly diagnosed with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the number of people living with diagnosed HIV infection, and the clinical outcomes of HIV infection, including acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and deaths. These data relate to the adults in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scottish data (Health Protection Scotland) and paediatric data (Institute of Child Health) are collected separately and collated to produce the national surveillance tables.
“HIV in the United Kingdom” is a report released annually by PHE in time for World AIDS Day (1 December). The report describes the HIV epidemic in the United Kingdom to date, including trends in new diagnoses and new infections, HIV prevalence, clinical outcomes for people living with HIV and behavioural and HIV testing trends. The data directly inform and evaluate the public health response to the HIV epidemic.
The conclusions of the report are developed by public health professionals who co-ordinate HIV surveillance activities, and are reached through interpretation of the HIV surveillance data.
Data sources, frequency of published data and date of next publication are available in the attached annex.
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what data is used to inform the quality dashboard programme developed by NHS England to monitor the quality of HIV care; from what sources that data was derived; how frequently such data is published; and when equivalent data will next be published.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The data for the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) quality dashboard are provided by Public Health England (PHE) using the national HIV surveillance and monitoring system which uses data directly submitted to PHE by HIV service providers. PHE uses the data to inform clinically important metrics of the quality of HIV care. These include late HIV diagnosis, time from HIV diagnosis to entry into HIV care, retention in HIV care and effectiveness of HIV treatment and care.
In 2015, the annual national dashboard information will be published in the autumn (data to the end 2014); trust level information (to end 2013) will be circulated (not published) to trusts and commissioners in June 2015.
Trust level data are used to monitor the quality of care and outcomes of HIV services to drive service improvement. The dashboard metrics are published online at:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/commissioning/spec-services/npc-crg/spec-dashboards/
Asked by: Simon Burns (Conservative - Chelmsford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many outpatient and inpatient appointments were (a) emergency and (b) elective with a (i) primary and (ii) secondary diagnosis of HIV in (A) England and (B) each clincial commissioning group area in each of the last 12 months; and what the average waiting time was for each such appointment.
Answered by Jane Ellison
The available information is set out in the attachments from Public Health England and the Health and Social Care Information Centre.