Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing an £86,000 cap on care home costs before 2025.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
In January 2022, the Government published an impact assessment for introducing an £86,000 cap on personal care costs and extending the means test in October 2023.
This applied to both residential and domiciliary care. As announced in the Autumn Statement, we listened to the concerns of local government and took the difficult decision to delay the planned adult social care charging reforms.
The funding intended for charging reform has been retained in local authority budgets to address current pressures and ensure that local authorities have the capacity and system readiness to deliver reform successfully.
The impact assessment is available at the following link:
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
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 access to innovative treatments for people living with non-tuberculosis mycobacteria in the UK.
Answered by Will Quince
On 20 October 2022, NHS England published clinical commissioning policy on the use of nebulised liposomal amikacin for the treatment of non-tuberculous mycobacterial pulmonary disease NTMPD, following an independent review. NHS England concluded that there was enough evidence to make the treatment available.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
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 help ensure the NHS meets the 10.3 per cent annual growth in treatment volumes required over the next two years to meet the elective recovery targets by 2025.
Answered by Will Quince
To support elective recovery, the Government plans to spend more than £8 billion from 2022/23 to 2024/25, in addition to the £2 billion Elective Recovery Fund, to help drive up and protect elective activity. As part of the Autumn Statement 2022, the Government announced an additional £3.3 billion for 2023/24 and 2024/25 to support the National Health Service in England, enabling rapid action to improve emergency, elective and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. Taken together, this funding could deliver the equivalent of around nine million more checks and procedures and will mean that the NHS in England can aim to deliver around 30% more elective activity by 2024/25 than before the pandemic.
The Government has now moved its focus to cutting waits of 65 weeks or more to as near zero as possible by March 2024. To help achieve this goal, we are taking a range of actions to maximise our productivity and capacity. This includes work to reduce outpatient follow-ups by 25%, expanding community diagnostic centres, increasing surgical capacity through surgical hubs, giving patients greater choice through a national hub model, and the development of the Independent Sector Provider offer to patients.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what percentage of community musculoskeletal services are submitting data on waiting list times.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Community Health Services waiting list data is published at provider level. They submit aggregated information for service lines, irrespective of the number of integrated care boards or regions they provide services within. Published data for May 2023 shows that 96% of providers submitted data to the Community Health Services Situation Reports.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what services his Department plans to include in community musculoskeletal hubs.
Answered by Will Quince
We are working with partners to define and scale up musculoskeletal (MSK) hubs in the community. This includes expanding access to community-based physical activity interventions and testing vocational support to help people with MSK conditions to manage their condition and remain in or return to work
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
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 support people who are waiting for traumatic and orthopaedic surgery for longer than 18 months.
Answered by Will Quince
The Government is taking steps with NHS England to support people waiting for appointments and surgery for long-term conditions, including in trauma and orthopaedics, by offering online support, increasing elective capacity and encouraging personalised support.
As set out in its elective recovery delivery plan, the National Health Service is increasing elective capacity and improving patient pathways to reduce avoidable delays in care. This includes funding new surgical hubs and expanding those already in operation to increase elective capacity and improve treatment waiting times for patients with long-term conditions. Through improvements to patient pathways, there will be greater end-to-end support, including help to prevent patients sustaining secondary injuries.
In addition, NHS England is working to develop further guidance to support local health systems to provide personalised and targeted support for patients and their carers, to help them manage their symptoms, prevent deterioration and recover effectively from treatment.
NHS England launched the My Planned Care platform in February 2022, giving patients advice and support to manage their health and avoid significant deterioration of symptoms whilst they wait for appointments. This online platform includes advice on movement, medication and mental health.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for his policies of 50-64 year olds not being eligible for a free flu vaccination in winter 2023.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Department is guided by the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) on the approach to the seasonal flu vaccination programme in England. Details about the flu vaccination programme for 2023/24, including which groups will be eligible for a free vaccine and the vaccines that will be reimbursable to National Health Service providers, were published on 25 May 2023. The groups eligible for a free flu vaccine for the 2023 to 2024 season include those aged 65 years and over and those aged six months to under 65 years in clinical risk groups.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, eligibility for the influenza programme was temporarily extended to include all adults aged between 50 and 64 years of age to protect the population from the potential threat of cocirculation of COVID-19 and influenza and alleviate pressure on the NHS. In the JCVI’s advice for the 2023/24 programme published in November 2022, it stated that whilst there would be a health benefit in vaccinating low risk 50-64 year olds, it is uncertain whether this would be cost effective and that the overall priority should be to extend the childhood programme in secondary schools as this would be more cost effective and likely to have a greater impact on morbidity and mortality compared with vaccinating 50-64 year olds. An expansion to secondary school-aged children is being considered and should this be confirmed, further details will be set out in due course.
The Department has not conducted its own modelling on the potential impact of providing free vaccinations to people aged 50-64 on NHS resource utilisation in the 2023-24 winter period but is guided by JCVI advice on cost-effectiveness. Anyone who is clinically at-risk is still entitled to a flu vaccination this year – it is only healthy 50–64-year-olds who are no longer eligible. The expansion of the seasonal flu programme to include low-risk 50–64-year-olds was a temporary measure to ensure more people were protected from a potential threat of co-circulation of COVID-19 and the flu virus and the department also sought to reduce pressure on the NHS. As we have now transitioned to living with COVID-19 with a firmly established vaccination programme in place to protect the most vulnerable, temporary expansions to the flu programme are no longer required.
The Department does not expect to reconsider this decision but will continue to be guided by JCVI advice on this matter.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to findings in the Cystic Fibrosis Trust report entitled UK Cystic Fibrosis Service Resourcing 2020 to 2022, published in March 2023, on the availability of access to full multidisciplinary teams at cystic fibrosis centres, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that cystic fibrosis centres have fully staffed multidisciplinary teams.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
NHS England’s adult and paediatric cystic fibrosis service specifications sets out national standards for cystic fibrosis services, including guidance on the composition of multi-disciplinary teams.
Service specifications are contractual documents between commissioners and providers. However, they do not mandate the number of staff in a multi-disciplinary team, as that is determined by the local trust according to the size of the service and the needs of the patient population.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits of making maternity exemption certificates apply from the start of the pregnancy even if applied for later.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We have made no specific assessment. The National Health Service (Charges for Drugs and Appliances) Regulations 2015 provide that a maternity exemption certificate (Matex) must be backdated one month before the date on which the application is received by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHS BSA). NHS BSA then process applications for Matex certificates on behalf of the Secretary of State.
The application process requires that a health care professional such as a midwife or a general practitioner to authorise the application to confirm the patient’s pregnancy and expected due date, with NHS BSA then issuing the Matex on this basis.
Asked by: Steve McCabe (Labour - Birmingham, Selly Oak)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will hold a consultation on the range of medical equipment eligible for financial support with running costs.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Autumn Statement set out a commitment to work with consumer groups and industry to consider the best approach to consumer protection from April 2024. As part of this work, the Government is working with disability organisations, assessing the need for support for people with disabilities including those using medical equipment in the home.
The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero plan to consult in Summer 2023 on options for a new approach to consumer protection in the energy markets from April 2024 onwards. The Department of Health and Social Care is supporting on this consultation in the interests of patients that require to utilise energy to run their medical equipment. We do not plan to consult on this issue separately.