Asked by: Lord Warner (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when was the last year that the NHS in England achieved (1) its four-hour target for A&E waiting times, (2) its 62-day target for cancer treatment, and (3) an average waiting time for elective surgery under six months.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The accident and emergency target and 62-day cancer treatment targets were last met at a national level in 2015. The average waiting time for elective surgery is currently under six months.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Elective recovery taskforce: implementation plan, published by her Department on 4 August 2023, what steps her Department is taking to help ensure elective recovery remains a key priority for those with (a) arthritis and (b) musculoskeletal conditions.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s top priorities. The National Health Service is prioritising urgent and cancer care and will continue to do its best to maintain appointments and elective services wherever possible, including joint replacement surgery and musculoskeletal services. 18-month waits for trauma and orthopaedic services have been reduced by more than 92% since September 2021.
Additionally, we are transforming the way the NHS provides elective care by increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs. This is focused on providing high volume low complexity surgery in six high volume specialties, which includes trauma and orthopaedics including joint replacement surgery, as well as other elective treatment areas such as ophthalmology, general surgery, gynaecology, Ear Nose and Throat, and urology.
94 of these such hubs are open currently, and through capital investment announced at 2021 Spending Review, the NHS plans to have 132 such centres open by March 2025.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
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 prioritise elective recovery for people with (a) arthritis and (b) musculoskeletal conditions.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s top priorities. The National Health Service is prioritising urgent and cancer care and will continue to do its best to maintain appointments and elective services wherever possible, including joint replacement surgery and musculoskeletal services. 18-month waits for trauma and orthopaedic services have been reduced by more than 92% since September 2021.
Additionally, we are transforming the way the NHS provides elective care by increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs. This is focused on providing high volume low complexity surgery in six high volume specialties, which includes trauma and orthopaedics including joint replacement surgery, as well as other elective treatment areas such as ophthalmology, general surgery, gynaecology, Ear Nose and Throat, and urology.
94 of these such hubs are open currently, and through capital investment announced at 2021 Spending Review, the NHS plans to have 132 such centres open by March 2025.
Asked by: Vicky Foxcroft (Labour - Lewisham North)
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 tackle backlogs in joint replacement surgery.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cutting waiting lists is one of the Government’s top priorities. The National Health Service is prioritising urgent and cancer care and will continue to do its best to maintain appointments and elective services wherever possible, including joint replacement surgery and musculoskeletal services. 18-month waits for trauma and orthopaedic services have been reduced by more than 92% since September 2021.
Additionally, we are transforming the way the NHS provides elective care by increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs. This is focused on providing high volume low complexity surgery in six high volume specialties, which includes trauma and orthopaedics including joint replacement surgery, as well as other elective treatment areas such as ophthalmology, general surgery, gynaecology, Ear Nose and Throat, and urology.
94 of these such hubs are open currently, and through capital investment announced at 2021 Spending Review, the NHS plans to have 132 such centres open by March 2025.
Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Answer of 16 March 2023 to Question 162205 on Health Services: Waiting Lists, what plans she has to ensure that waiting lists for (a) trauma and orthopaedic surgery, (b) rheumatology and (c) other elective treatment do not rise this winter.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson
Cutting waiting lists is one of the Prime Minister’s top priorities, and despite disruption from strikes, 18-month waits have been reduced by more than 90% from their peak in September 2021.
We recognise that industrial action and winter demands will mean that services are under increased pressure. The National Health Service is prioritising urgent and cancer care and will continue to do its best to maintain appointments and elective procedures wherever possible, including across trauma, orthopaedics and rheumatology. As part of this effort, in November 2023 the government and NHS England agreed to provide £800 million from a combination of reprioritised and new funding to mitigate the costs of industrial action and help patients get the care they need as quickly as possible this winter.
Additionally, we are transforming the way the NHS provides elective care by increasing activity through dedicated and protected surgical hubs. This is focused on providing high volume low complexity surgery in six high volume specialties: which includes trauma and orthopaedics (including spinal surgery), as well as other elective treatment areas such as ophthalmology, general surgery, gynaecology, Ear Nose and Throat and urology.
Diagnostics also forms an important part of elective care over winter. With only one in five patients on the waiting lists requiring a hospital admission – and most others waiting for scans or checks – we are continuing to expand our diagnostic capacity through the rollout of community diagnostic centres, which allow patients to receive tests close to home.
Asked by: Stephen Morgan (Labour - Portsmouth South)
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 (a) reduce waiting lists for ophthalmology care and (b) ensure that access to care is prioritised according to need.
Answered by Will Quince
We are taking action to recover elective services, including ophthalmology, by working towards the targets set out in the Elective Recovery Plan and providing the National Health Service with record levels of staffing and funding. We plan to transform the way the NHS provides elective care by increasing activity, including through dedicated and protected surgical hubs, focusing on providing high-volume, low-complexity surgery as recommended by the Royal College of Surgeons of England. These hubs will initially focus on driving improvement in six high volume specialties, one of these being ophthalmology.
The most recent published data from NHS England shows that the average wait time for referral to treatment for ophthalmology was 12.3 weeks, below the national average of 14.5 weeks.
The NHS will triage patients waiting for elective care through three key stages: firstly, through clinical prioritisation, ensuring the order in which patients are seen reflects clinical judgement on need; secondly, by managing long waits through targeting support to reduce the number of people waiting a long time; and thirdly, increasing the number of cancer referrals, ensuring that those patients who have not yet presented to services are included. These considerations are critical in improving overall health outcomes, underpinned by new investment and new technology.
Asked by: Baroness Hodgson of Abinger (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are funding research into finding a cure for mesothelioma.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
Research is crucial in the fight against cancer. That is why the Department invests £1 billion per year in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). NIHR research expenditure for all cancers was over £101 million for 2021/22.
NIHR funded the following research programmes, totalling approximately £3 million, since 2018:
- A double blind, placebo-controlled, randomized phase II study of Pemetrexed and Cisplatin with and without Ruxolitinib in Malignant Pleural Mesothelioma;
- Mesothelioma and Radical Surgery 2: a multicentre randomised trial comparing (extended) pleurectomy decortication versus no (extended) pleurectomy decortication for patients with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MARS 2);
- Nivolumab with ipilimumab for untreated unresectable malignant pleural mesothelioma [ID1609];
- Treating mesothelioma with Intra-pleural Lipoteichoic acid (the TILT Trial): A feasibility study using the ‘Trial within a Cohort’ methodology;
- Developing a short-term integrated rehabilitation service for people with newly diagnosed thoracic cancer;
- Randomised controlled trial to compare the diagnostic yield of Positron Emission Tomography Computerised Tomography (PET-CT) guided pleural biopsy versus CT-guided pleural biopsy in suspected pleural malignancy (PET-biopsy trial);
- Zoledronic acid in the management of malignant pleural mesothelioma - a feasibility study (Zol-A Study); and
- MesoTRAP: A feasibility study comparing video-assisted thoracoscopic partial pleurectomy/decortication with indwelling pleural catheter in patients with trapped lung and pleural effusion due to malignant pleural mesothelioma designed to address recruitment and randomisation uncertainties and sample size requirements for a phase III trial.
The NIHR is also supporting delivery in the health and care system of over 50 mesothelioma research studies funded by research funding partners in the charity and public sectors since 2018.
The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including research into mesothelioma. As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. Applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made based on the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.
Asked by: Martyn Day (Scottish National Party - Linlithgow and East Falkirk)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what progress his Department has made on implementing the recommendations made by the Liver Advisory Group in 2020 on liver transplantation for the treatment of perihilar cholangiocarcinoma and intra-hepatic cholangiocarcinoma.
Answered by Neil O'Brien - Shadow Minister (Policy Renewal and Development)
The Liver Advisory Group, on behalf of NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT), are exploring pilot programmes for selected patients with both small intra-hepatic cholangiocarcinoma and perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (pHCCa) with underlying primary sclerosing cholangitis.
The pathway for intrahepatic Cholangiocarcinoma is now live and there is an offering process in place which should ensure they receive a timely named patient offer. The protocol for pHCCa remains in development and will soon be live in the third quarter of this year. Additionally, in collaboration with NHS England, NHSBT are developing the pHCCa as a commissioning evaluation for the neoadjuvant pathway of proton beam therapy which is a ground-breaking intervention that is being evaluated in this clinical transplant pathway.
Asked by: Lord Patten (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have made an assessment of the use of robotic surgery in the UK compared to the use in (1) other European countries, and (2) the USA.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have developed interventional procedures guidance on robot assisted kidney transplant and totally endoscopic robotically assisted coronary artery bypass grafting that are based on thorough assessment of safety and efficacy for routine use in clinical practice.
NHS England is responsible for setting evidence-based national service standards, including service specifications and clinical commissioning policies, and for ensuring the implementation of NICE Technology Appraisal Guidance within local systems. Robotic assisted surgery has been commissioned in line with national policies for prostate cancer and early-stage kidney cancers that are unsuitable for conventional laparoscopic surgery.
In view of the rapidly evolving nature of robotic assisted surgery, no detailed forecast of the expected future use has been developed at this time, but it is anticipated that the use of robotic techniques in surgical operations will increase over the coming years. No specific assessment has been made of the use of robotic surgery in the United Kingdom compared to Europe or the United States of America at this time.
Asked by: Lord Patten (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the utility and safety of robotic techniques in surgical operations for patients in the UK.
Answered by Lord Markham - Shadow Minister (Science, Innovation and Technology)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) have developed interventional procedures guidance on robot assisted kidney transplant and totally endoscopic robotically assisted coronary artery bypass grafting that are based on thorough assessment of safety and efficacy for routine use in clinical practice.
NHS England is responsible for setting evidence-based national service standards, including service specifications and clinical commissioning policies, and for ensuring the implementation of NICE Technology Appraisal Guidance within local systems. Robotic assisted surgery has been commissioned in line with national policies for prostate cancer and early-stage kidney cancers that are unsuitable for conventional laparoscopic surgery.
In view of the rapidly evolving nature of robotic assisted surgery, no detailed forecast of the expected future use has been developed at this time, but it is anticipated that the use of robotic techniques in surgical operations will increase over the coming years. No specific assessment has been made of the use of robotic surgery in the United Kingdom compared to Europe or the United States of America at this time.