Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment has she made of the adequacy of the progress towards full delegated commissioning for Integrated Care Boards by April 2025 in (a) the South West, (b) the South East, (c) London and (d) the North East.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The total spend on commissioning specialised services was £22.7 billion in 2022/23 and £25 billion in 2023/24. As formal delegation of specialised services to integrated care boards (ICBs) begins from 1 April 2024, all spend on commissioning these services in previous years has been the responsibility of NHS England, and not the ICBs. For 2024/25, NHS England is delegating £5.3 billion of commissioning resource to ICBs in the three regions, where delegation will begin from April 2024. This figure excludes high-cost drugs and devices spend.
The nine joint committee arrangements arose from a robust process, which included a readiness assessment, the Pre-Delegation Assessment Framework, made between the ICBs and NHS England regional teams, followed by a National Moderation Panel, and final decision taken by the NHS England Board. The NHS England Board papers for February 2023, December 2023, and March 2024 are available, respectively, at the following links:
The process concluded that a transitional year of joint commissioning would offer the most secure and stable transition towards delegation. There is a comprehensive programme structure in place to support the ICBs in the four regions that are working towards delegation in April 2025, to support them in being ready to take on the responsibilities. NHS England is continuing to work alongside ICBs to ensure that delegation agreements are in place, including ensuring appropriate collaborative arrangements are developed to support ICB commissioning of specialised services. These arrangements will be monitored by NHS England through its assurance processes for specialised services.
A webinar series for commissioning staff, including colleagues in ICBs, was delivered in 2023 across different aspects of specialised services, and there are additional webinars planned in 2024. There has been, and will continue to be, local engagement between regional commissioning teams and ICB teams, as the future operating model is co-developed. A suite of support materials has been shared with teams and continues to be updated. As examples, these include: Commissioning Change Management Business Rules; Finance and Accounting Standard Operating Procedure; and the Contracting Standard Operating Procedure.
NHS England develops services specification and clinical policies through its Clinical Reference Groups. There are 250 published service specifications which include clinical pathway, quality, and other relevant standards, which are specific to the clinical service. Regional commissioning teams, overseen by the statutory joint committees, are responsible for implementing the specifications in their commissioning of services, along with assessing compliance against national standards. NHS England has developed Specialised Services Quality Dashboards alongside service specifications, which provide additional data to monitor the quality of services.
Asked by: Karin Smyth (Labour - Bristol South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what (a) training and (b) support on specialised services is provided for staff working in integrated care boards in the (i) East of England, (ii) Midlands and (iii) North West following full delegation of commissioning in 2024-25.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The total spend on commissioning specialised services was £22.7 billion in 2022/23 and £25 billion in 2023/24. As formal delegation of specialised services to integrated care boards (ICBs) begins from 1 April 2024, all spend on commissioning these services in previous years has been the responsibility of NHS England, and not the ICBs. For 2024/25, NHS England is delegating £5.3 billion of commissioning resource to ICBs in the three regions, where delegation will begin from April 2024. This figure excludes high-cost drugs and devices spend.
The nine joint committee arrangements arose from a robust process, which included a readiness assessment, the Pre-Delegation Assessment Framework, made between the ICBs and NHS England regional teams, followed by a National Moderation Panel, and final decision taken by the NHS England Board. The NHS England Board papers for February 2023, December 2023, and March 2024 are available, respectively, at the following links:
The process concluded that a transitional year of joint commissioning would offer the most secure and stable transition towards delegation. There is a comprehensive programme structure in place to support the ICBs in the four regions that are working towards delegation in April 2025, to support them in being ready to take on the responsibilities. NHS England is continuing to work alongside ICBs to ensure that delegation agreements are in place, including ensuring appropriate collaborative arrangements are developed to support ICB commissioning of specialised services. These arrangements will be monitored by NHS England through its assurance processes for specialised services.
A webinar series for commissioning staff, including colleagues in ICBs, was delivered in 2023 across different aspects of specialised services, and there are additional webinars planned in 2024. There has been, and will continue to be, local engagement between regional commissioning teams and ICB teams, as the future operating model is co-developed. A suite of support materials has been shared with teams and continues to be updated. As examples, these include: Commissioning Change Management Business Rules; Finance and Accounting Standard Operating Procedure; and the Contracting Standard Operating Procedure.
NHS England develops services specification and clinical policies through its Clinical Reference Groups. There are 250 published service specifications which include clinical pathway, quality, and other relevant standards, which are specific to the clinical service. Regional commissioning teams, overseen by the statutory joint committees, are responsible for implementing the specifications in their commissioning of services, along with assessing compliance against national standards. NHS England has developed Specialised Services Quality Dashboards alongside service specifications, which provide additional data to monitor the quality of services.
Asked by: Peter Gibson (Conservative - Darlington)
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 levels of liver disease in Darlington constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
Through the 2021 Drugs Strategy we are making the largest ever single increase in drug and alcohol treatment and recovery funding, with £780 million of additional investment. Of this, £532 million is being invested to rebuild local authority commissioned substance misuse treatment services in England. As alcohol and drug services are commissioned together, this will benefit people seeking treatment for alcohol use.
In the financial years 2022/23 to 2024/25, Darlington has been allocated just over £1.9 million through the Supplementary Substance Misuse Treatment and Recovery Grant and Inpatient Detoxification Grant, to increase the number of people benefiting from alcohol and drug treatment and recovery services, and the outcomes they achieve. This is additional to the amounts invested through the Public Health Grant.
Work in the National Health Service, specifically piloting early diagnosis and prevention through 19 community diagnostic hubs, is identifying undiagnosed liver disease. The North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board is enrolled in a Community Liver Health Check pilot in Newcastle, being delivered by the system’s Hepatitis C Operational Delivery Networks. This will provide FibroScans in one-stop community clinics, where patients also have other investigations, as required. The pilot has expanded into North Tyneside, and when resources allow, they intend to develop clinics elsewhere.
Beyond treatment, we are committed to tackling alcohol harms including reducing consumption levels, and in 2023 the Government introduced reforms to alcohol duty, meaning products are taxed directly in proportion to their alcohol content.
Asked by: Simon Jupp (Conservative - East Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking the help reduce the number of drug offences in (a) East Devon constituency and (b) Devon.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Reducing drug-related crime is a key priority of the Government’s 10-year Drugs Strategy. We are making good progress. Since April 2022, we have closed over 2,500 county lines nationally.
Through the County Lines Programme, our exporter force taskforces (Metropolitain Police Service, Merseyside, West Midlands and Greater Manchester Police) work in collaboration with importer forces, including Devon & Cornwall Police, to tackle the drug supply and exploitation associated with County Lines.
Through our County Lines Programme, we also fund the National County Lines Co-ordination Centre (NCLCC), to monitor the intelligence picture and co-ordinate the national law enforcement response. We have also established a dedicated Surge Fund to help forces tackle county lines, from which Devon and Cornwall Police have received investment.
Through the Drugs Strategy, we are also investing £532m into high quality drug treatment which reduces crime and reoffending. There are now 24,500 more people in treatment across England, including Devon.
The Government has asked every area in England to form a Combating Drugs Partnership (CDP) to work together to reduce drug-related harm and crime. East Devon is covered by the Devon CDP. The Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) for Devon and Cornwall has established a Strategic Peninsular Drugs & Alcohol Partnership which meets 4 times a year and serves as a forum for the 4 CDPs (including Devon CDP) to come together at a Police Force Area level.
Asked by: Simon Jupp (Conservative - East Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help tackle anti-social behaviour in (a) East Devon constituency and (b) Devon.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
Last year the Government launched the Anti-social Behaviour Action Plan (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/anti-social-behaviour-action-plan), backed by £160m in new funding to ensure the police, local authorities and other relevant agencies have the tools they need to tackle anti-social behaviour.
This includes funding an increased police and other uniformed presence to clamp down on anti-social behaviour, targeting hotspots. Initially we worked with 10 police force areas and following its success in 2024 we are supporting a hotspot approach across every police force area in England and Wales. Devon and Cornwall PCC has been awarded £1m in funding to carry out the Hotspot Response approach, tackling areas of high incidents of both ASB and serious violence.
Asked by: Simon Jupp (Conservative - East Devon)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps he is taking to help tackle violence against women and girls in East Devon constituency.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
It is difficult to determine the specific activity to tackle violence against women in the East Devon constituency as services are mostly commissioned at a national level, and not monitored by the Home Office by constituency.
To help support local service commissioners, we published a revised National Statement of Expectations in March 2022, which sets out how local areas should commission effective services. It also aims to increase understanding of the need for specialist services and the value of those designed and delivered by and for the users and communities they aim to serve.
As part of the effort to tackle these crimes across England and Wales, in 2021 we published our cross-Government Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy to help ensure that women and girls are safe everywhere - at home, online, at work and in public. This was followed by a complementary cross-Government Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan in 2022.
These documents aim to transform the whole of society’s response to these crimes with actions to prevent abuse, support victims and pursue perpetrators, as well as to strengthen the systems that underpin the response. The actions set out in both strategy documents benefit all regions across England and Wales, including East Devon.
The Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan committed to over £230 million from 2022-2025. As part of this commitment, the joint Home Office-Ministry of Justice VAWG Support and Specialist Service Fund will provide up to £8.3 million (in total) from 2023-2025 for specialist organisations to support victims often facing the greatest barriers to getting the help they need.
The Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan funding also includes the Children Affected by Domestic Abuse (CADA) Fund, which allocated £10.3 million over three years (2022-2025) to eight organisations across England and Wales to provide specialist support within the community to children who have been impacted by domestic abuse. Part of this includes c.£1.25m for the Children’s Society to provide direct support for children and young people and families, including those from rural and hard to reach communities, covering Devon, Shropshire, Rochdale and Merseyside.
In May 2023, the Home Office also launched a £300,000 ‘flexible fund’ trial in partnership with Women’s Aid Federation for England to make direct cash payments of £250 to victims and survivors of domestic abuse (£500 to those with children and those who are pregnant) to help remove barriers to leaving an abusive relationship. In November 2023, the Government commitment to support victims was renewed with a further £2m investment into the Flexible Fund until March 2025.
Through the current Round Five of the Safer Streets Fund, the Home Office has directly awarded £34 million to Police and Crime Commissioners across England and Wales to deliver interventions to tackle neighbourhood crime, anti-social behaviour and VAWG. Devon and Cornwall received £819,998.64 (2024-2025) to support projects covering Paignton, Camborne and Redruth and are delivering educational training packages such as bystander training to help address behaviour and attitudes on VAWG and using night-time economy marshalls for patrols in the town centres.
Asked by: Ian Lavery (Labour - Wansbeck)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential impact of the failure to agree a deal to build a gigafactory in Cambois on (a) the Gen Zero Campus in Ashington and (b) Energy Central Campus in Blyth.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The Ashington campus of Northumberland College is one of the 16 large scale transformational projects that are being delivered by the department in partnership with colleges, as part of the £1.5 billion Further Education Capital Transformation Programme. The 16 colleges in this phase of the programme have some of the worst condition sites in England. The new campus in Ashington is a Gen-Zero development, designed to be ultra-low carbon in both construction and operation, and will provide exciting career pathways for learners across Northumberland and the wider region. The department is funding this project in order to improve the condition of the further education college estate and its investment is not linked to the gigafactory.
The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities state that the case for the Energy Central Campus in Blyth was based on an assessment of existing net zero skills requirements across the North-East of England. Progress on construction of Phase 1, the Energy Central Learning Hub, is progressing well, with the Hub on course to open in autumn 2024.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:
To ask His Majesty's Government how they plan to reduce the rates of deaths of despair in the North East, which has over double the rate of London; and what assessment they have made of using rates of deaths of despair to assess progress on levelling up.
Answered by Baroness Swinburne - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities)
The Supplemental Substance Misuse Treatment and Recovery (SSMTR) Grant is the mechanism by which local authorities receive Drug Strategy funding to increase substance misuse treatment service capacity and the quality of interventions people receive. The SSMTR Grant is made available to local authorities on the condition of maintaining existing funding through the Public Health Grant.
Details of the SSMTR Grant and the Inpatient Detox (IPD) Grant allocations for the North East are set out below.
| 2022-23 | 2023-24 | 2024-25 | 2022-23 to 2024-25 |
SSMTR | £7,051,992 | £13,677,970 | £24,787,253 | £45,517,215 |
IPD | £727,295 | £727,295 | £727,295 | £2,181,885 |
DHSC is also providing £1,157,212 in funding to three local authorities in the North East (Middlesborough, Newcastle and Durham) to improve access to drug and alcohol treatment services for people who sleep rough or who are at risk of sleeping rough.
On 11 September 2023, the Government published a Suicide Prevention Strategy for England, with over 130 actions that we believe will make progress towards our ambition to reduce the suicide rate within two and a half years. The Strategy includes an intention to write guidance for local areas to support them to align their own strategies with the national strategy.
On 4 March 2024, we announced that 79 organisations up and down the country, including some in the North East, have been allocated funding from the £10 million Suicide Prevention VCSE Grant Fund. These organisations, from local, community-led through to national, are delivering a broad and diverse range of activity that will prevent suicides and save lives.
The Levelling Up White Paper set out 12 missions, including the health mission, focused on improving Healthy Life Expectancy and narrowing the gap between local areas where it is highest and lowest.
We are supporting people to live healthier lives, helping the NHS and social care to provide the best treatment and care for patients and tackling health disparities through national and system interventions such as the NHS’s Core20PLUS5 programme.
We are monitoring progress on a range of behavioural risk factors and underlying drivers of health, which are likely to impact on the health mission. We continue to use metrics that are publicly available and routinely updated to measure the levelling up missions, chosen to show as comprehensive a picture across the UK as possible. We are committed to developing this data picture and improving understanding of health disparities at a local level.
Asked by: John Hayes (Conservative - South Holland and The Deepings)
Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what steps she is taking to help support the growth of creative industries in (a) Lincolnshire and (b) the East Midlands.
Answered by Julia Lopez - Minister of State (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology)
The UK Government has a clear plan to grow the creative industries by a further £50 billion and support another 1 million jobs by 2030. This was set out in June 2023 in the Creative Industries Sector Vision, which was accompanied by £77 million of new funding to support the sector’s growth. This is on top of a range of tax reliefs introduced or expanded since 2010 covering film, television, animation, video games, orchestras, theatres and more.
Creative Industries GVA grew at more than twice the rate of UK GVA between 2010 and 2022 (50.3% vs 21.5%), and helped support more than a million new jobs since 2010.
Measures in the Sector Vision include the £28.4 million Create Growth Programme (CGP) to support high-growth creative businesses in twelve English regions outside London to scale up and become investment ready. The CGP is being delivered in twelve local area partnerships, including Leicester and Leicestershire Enterprise Partnership in the East Midlands.
It also includes £950k for the Creative Careers Programme, which raises young people’s awareness of creative careers and pathways by providing specialist advice and information through a range of industry-led engagement. It is delivered in regions around England, including the East Midlands (Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, Leicester and Leicestershire and Greater Lincolnshire).
It includes £50 million announced for the second wave of the Creative Clusters Programme, designed to deliver innovation and R&D funding across the UK. This builds on the original £56 million programme initiated in 2018.
The Arts Council England 2023-2026 Investment Programme is also investing £444 million each year into arts and culture in England and is providing around £22 million per year to cultural organisations in the East Midlands, including Lincolnshire.
Asked by: Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Labour - Slough)
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 fund HIV treatment.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The HIV Action Plan is the cornerstone of our approach to driving progress and achieving our goal of ending new HIV transmissions, AIDS, and HIV-related deaths within England by 2030. Rapid access to, and retention in, HIV treatment and care can support those diagnosed with HIV in living healthy lives and maintaining an undetectable viral load, meaning they cannot transmit HIV to their sexual partners.
As demonstrated by our success in meeting the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS’s 95-95-95 targets, England does very well on viral suppression and retention in care, with 98% of those diagnosed being on treatment, and 98% of those on treatment having an undetectable viral load. HIV treatment and care remain world class in England, and most beneficial outcomes remain high across all population groups. HIV treatment is available free of charge from open access HIV clinics in the National Health Service, and funded by the Department though our budget allocation to NHS England.
The HIV Action Plan identifies that regional directors of public health will provide system leadership on HIV at a regional level, and local governance arrangements take various forms. It is for regional and local systems to oversee relevant care provision. The Department has not assessed the adequacy of health care provision for those diagnosed with HIV in local or regional areas, including Slough and the South East.
Local authorities in England are responsible for commissioning open access sexual health services, including HIV prevention and testing services, through the public health grant, funded at £3.6 billion in 2024/25. It is for individual local authorities to decide their spending priorities based on an assessment of local need, and to commission the service lines that best suit their population. The UK Health Security Agency provides support to regions and local government, including helping areas to understand the local situation in depth and identify where to focus efforts.