Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 impact of abolishing NHS England on the NHS’s statutory duty to safeguarding.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
It is only right that with such significant reform, we commit to carefully assessing and understanding the potential impacts. Evidence from these ongoing assessments will inform our programme as appropriate.
NHS England will continue to carry out its statutory duties until Parliamentary time allows for legislation to be brought forward to amend the Department’s responsibilities.
We will ensure our decisions are guided by evidence, and above all, focused on improving outcomes for people.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 ensure that people eligible for NHS continuing healthcare funding have access to services.
Answered by Helen Whately - Shadow Secretary of State for Work and Pensions
The National Framework for NHS Continuing Healthcare and NHS-funded Nursing Care sets out in paragraph 185 that, where an individual is eligible for NHS Continuing Healthcare (CHC), the integrated care board (ICB) is responsible for care planning, commissioning services, and case management. The ICB is responsible for planning strategically, specifying outcomes, procuring services, and managing demand and provider performance in relation to CHC. The services commissioned must include ongoing case management, including review or reassessment of the individual’s needs.
NHS England holds ICBs accountable, and engages with them to ensure that they discharge their functions via timely and well-established assurance mechanisms. The national framework also sets out that those in receipt of CHC continue to be entitled to access to the full range of primary, community, secondary, and other health services.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that people operating as (a) hypnotherapists and (b) psychotherapists are (i) registered and (ii) regulated.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Hypnotherapists and Psychotherapists are not statutorily regulated, and there are no current plans to introduce statutory regulation for either profession. The Professional Standards Authority for health and social care operates an accredited voluntary registers programme, providing a proportionate means of assurance for unregulated professions, by setting standards for organisations holding voluntary registers. There are currently two accredited registers related to hypnotherapy, and twelve accredited registers related to psychotherapy.
The Government keeps the professions subject to statutory regulation under review, and in 2022, published the consultation Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate, which sought views on the criteria used to decide when regulation is necessary, and whether there are any unregulated professions that should be brought into statutory regulation. The Government will publish its response to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has made an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of Pancreatic Cancer UK's Optimal Care Pathway recommendations.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
NHS England is delivering a range of interventions that are expected to increase early diagnosis, and improve outcomes for those with pancreatic cancer. This includes providing a route into pancreatic cancer surveillance for those at inherited high-risk, to identify lesions before they develop into cancer and diagnose cancers sooner, creating new pathways to support faster referral routes for people with non-specific symptoms that could be linked to a range of cancer types, and increasing general practice direct access to diagnostic tests. NHS England has also formed an expert group to consider a pathway for hepato-pancreato-biliary cancers, including pancreatic cancer.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that any person operating as a (a) hypnotherapist and (b) psychotherapist is (i) registered and (ii) regulated.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
Hypnotherapists and psychotherapists are not statutorily regulated. The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care operates a voluntary registry programme, and provides a proportionate means of assurance for unregulated professions which sit between employer controls and statutory regulation, by setting standards for organisations holding voluntary registration for unregulated health and social care occupations.
There are currently two accredited registers related to hypnotherapy, and 12 accredited registers related to psychotherapy. The Government regularly reviews which professions are subject to statutory regulation, and in 2022 published the consultation, Healthcare regulation: deciding when statutory regulation is appropriate. This consultation sought views on the criteria used to decide when regulation is necessary, and whether there are any unregulated professions that should be brought into statutory regulation. The Government will publish its response to the consultation in due course.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 support people who have long covid.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
NHS England has invested £314 million to expand National Health Service long COVID treatment and rehabilitation services, establishing 100 long COVID services for adults, and 13 specialist paediatric hubs for children and young people. These assess people with long COVID and direct them into appropriate care pathways, which provide appropriate support and treatment. Commissioning of post-COVID-19 services will transition from the long COVID national programme to integrated care boards by the end of March 2024. Funding for long COVID services in 2024/25 is expected to be allocated based on the current, 2023/24 distribution.
The Government has invested over £50 million into long COVID research. The projects aim to improve our understanding of the diagnosis and underlying mechanisms of the disease and the effectiveness of both pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies and interventions, and to evaluate clinical care.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to reduce waste of NHS equipment that can be safely reused.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
The Department published the inaugural Medical Technology Strategy in February 2023, which included a focus on improving resource efficiency. The Department is working with industry, the health and care sector, and academic partners to develop medical technology systems that support reuse, remanufacture, and materials recovery, by default. Within the medical technology sector, the Department is exploring options for reuse, remanufacture, and materials recovery in medical devices through its Design for Life programme. This includes developing regulatory, commercial, infrastructure and policy environments that support these aims.
The NHS clinical waste strategy, published on 7 March 2023, sets out NHS England’s ambition to transform the management of clinical waste by eliminating unnecessary waste, finding innovative ways to reuse, and ensuring waste is processed in the most cost effective, efficient, and sustainable way.
NHS England has developed a waste planning tool consistent with this clinical waste strategy for all National Health Service providers, which includes improved segregation, waste minimisation, and increased reuse programmes. This will lead to reductions in the road miles that waste travels, increases in the use of re-usable sharps bins, and plans made towards the achievement of Net Zero Carbon from waste management.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 hospital births in 2023 were via caesarean sections.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The information is not available in the format requested, as data is only available from January 2023 to November 2023. Provisional data from NHS England indicates that there were 509,647 birth episodes in total during this period, of which there was a valid delivery method recorded for 402,571 episodes. 158,562, or 39%, of these births were recorded by delivery method of caesarean.
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help prevent the spread of bedbugs.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The Department does not have responsibility for reducing the spread of bedbugs. Bedbugs are not an invasive species and are not known to spread diseases, although any individuals who think they have bedbugs should contact their local council or pest control service. Some further information on bedbugs is available at the following link:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/bedbugs/
Asked by: Tulip Siddiq (Labour - Hampstead and Highgate)
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 merits of prioritising the covid-19 vaccine booster programme for people diagnosed with long-covid.
Answered by Maria Caulfield
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) is an independent group of experts who advise the Government health departments in the four nations of the United Kingdom on immunisations and the prevention of infectious disease. On 8 August 2023, the Government accepted advice from the JCVI on who should be offered COVID-19 vaccination in autumn 2023.
The primary aim of the COVID-19 vaccination programme remains the prevention of severe illness, namely hospitalisations and deaths, arising from COVID-19. The JCVI advice is to focus the offer of vaccination on those at greatest risk of serious disease or at high risk of transmitting the disease to vulnerable individuals. For this autumn the eligible groups for vaccination are residents and staff in a care home for older adults, all adults aged 65 years old and over, persons aged 6 months to 64 years old in a clinical risk group, frontline health and social care workers, persons aged 12 to 64 years old who are household contacts and persons aged 16 to 64 years old who are carers.
The clinical risk groups for COVID-19 vaccination are defined in the UK Health Security Agency’s ‘Green Book’ on vaccines and immunisation Chapter 14a tables 3 and 4. Post-COVID Syndrome (long COVID) is not currently identified by the JCVI as one of these conditions. The JCVI considered post-COVID syndromes when developing advice for autumn 2023 and concluded that there is not currently sufficient evidence to support making individuals experiencing post-COVID syndrome an eligible group for vaccination.
To support individuals with long COVID, NHS England has set out a long COVID action plan, including establishing a nationwide network of specialist clinics. Anyone who is concerned about ongoing symptoms following COVID-19 can find information and advice on the ‘NHS Your COVID Recovery’ website. The JCVI will continue to review evidence and will provide further advice regarding future vaccination programmes in due course.