Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress has been made in reducing the national diabetes-related amputation rate since his 2013 commitment to halving that rate.

The NHS Five Year Forward View committed to introducing the first national diabetes prevention programme to be delivered nationwide. As a result, NHS England, Public Health England and Diabetes UK have been working together on Healthier You: the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme which this year will offer at least 10,000 places on an evidence based behaviour change intervention shown to reduce the risk of Type 2 diabetes. Preventing diabetes from developing in those at risk will be key to combatting the rise of this condition and its complications, including those resulting in amputation, in the coming years.

We have made achieving a measurable reduction in variation in the management and care of people with diabetes by 2020 a mandate objective for NHS England and improving foot care for people with diabetes is an important part of achieving this. NHS England will support clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) and providers in identifying the steps they need to take to improve outcomes for patients with diabetes, including foot care services for inpatients.

Improvements in outcomes for patients with diabetes will be monitored as part of the CCG Improvement and Assessment Framework. Also, the National Diabetes Foot Care Audit, the first of which was published in March, provides data on all diabetes foot care services. This will enable all foot care services to measure their performance against the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence clinical guidelines and peer units, and to monitor adverse outcomes for people who develop diabetic foot disease.