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 he is taking to increase the proportion of written parliamentary questions which receive answers within the usual time period.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department takes seriously its parliamentary obligations. I am grateful to my colleagues for their patience as we respond to a very high number of written parliamentary questions (PQs).
The Department of Health and Social Care is the busiest Department in Whitehall in terms of the volume of PQs that we receive, routinely receiving in excess of 1,400 PQs each month. In the most recent period for which the Table Office has provided data on PQ performance, from 24 March to 30 June 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care received nearly double the number of PQs as the next highest volume departments, and received 15% of all PQs tabled across Whitehall.
We are taking action to improve PQ performance. This includes enhancing the data available to policy teams on outstanding casework and ensuring that the joint leadership of the Department is championing the importance of PQs.
Asked by: Edward Morello (Liberal Democrat - West Dorset)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help improve the speed and efficiency of vaccine rollout when new vaccines receive NHS approval.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to supporting the timely delivery of new vaccination programmes to fully protect the public from vaccine preventable diseases. The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation meets regularly to consider both current and future vaccine products and to advise ministers accordingly.
The Department works with NHS England and the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) to secure supply deals with manufacturers, stockpile doses, and coordinate logistics to ensure fast deployment, working at pace to update guidelines and training documents so that the workforce providing vaccines is ready to go.
To boost capacity, the Department is exploring new ways of delivering vaccinations including health visits and community pharmacy, with pilots for administering vaccinations as part of health visits standing-up from January 2026. Digital tools also ensure speedy and efficient rollout, for instance: online booking via the NHS app; automated reminders; and data dashboards to track uptake and tweak priorities in real-time. Finally, the Department works with NHS England and the UKHSA to develop targeted communications campaigns, advertising, and social media to build trust and drive appointments, aiming for high coverage from day one. Programme planning by the UKHSA and NHS England occurs simultaneously to ensure delivery of safe, clinically effective, stable, and accessible programmes that commence at the right time and are rolled out in a timely manner after a policy decision has been made.
Asked by: Mike Wood (Conservative - Kingswinford and South Staffordshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 15 September 2025 to Question 73327 on Alan Milburn, if he will list which other areas of health policy Mr Milburn has recused himself from.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Prior to appointment, non-executive candidates are required to declare all relevant interests. Appropriate mitigations are then put in place and approved by the Department.
This process was carried out for the Rt Hon. Alan Milburn, whose interests, and any updates to them, are available in the Department’s Annual Report and Accounts and on the GOV.UK website in alignment with Government policy.
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many performance reviews were undertaken for staff in (a) his Department and (b) its agencies in each of the last five years; in how many of those cases performance was rated as unsatisfactory or below; how many staff left as a result of such a rating; and what proportion of full-time equivalent staff this represented.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Senior civil servants (SCS) and delegated grades, non-SCS staff, follow different performance management frameworks. SCS staff operate within the framework for SCS performance management prescribed by the Cabinet Office. For delegated performance there is a flexible framework that requires departments to reflect a number of core elements in their approach, including differentiating performance, addressing under and poor performance, and addressing diversity and inclusion.
In the Department of Health and Social Care, the policy is that all individuals should have monthly reviews and performance ratings that are collated and returned to human resources mid-year, in October, and at the end of the year, in April. Whilst the Department of Health and Social Care only collected data for delegated grades for the 2024/25 performance year, it has complete data for SCS staff for the last five years. The following table shows the number of end of year performance ratings returned from 2020/21 to 2024/25:
Year | SCS | Delegated grades |
2020/21 | 192 | Not recorded |
2021/22 | 284 | Not recorded |
2022/23 | 257 | Not recorded |
2023/24 | 227 | Not recorded |
2024/25 | 225 | 2,820 |
Furthermore, the following table shows how many were rated as unsatisfactory or below, or the equivalent ratings used by the relevant organisations, on each occasion, from 2020/21 to 2024/25:
Year | SCS | Delegated grades |
2020/2021 | [c]* | Not recorded |
2021/2022 | [c]* | Not recorded |
2022/2023 | 10 | Not recorded |
2023/2024 | 10 | Not recorded |
2024/2025 | 13 | <10 |
Note: *[c] means confidential and suppressed due to small numbers of less than five.
The Department of Health and Social Care does not hold data on how many staff left as a result of an unsatisfactory performance rating.
In the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), the policy is that all individuals should have monthly performance conversations, and performance ratings are collated and returned to human resources at end of year in April. The UKHSA only collected data for delegated grades for the 2024/25 performance year but has complete data for SCS staff for the last five years. The MHRA did not collect data for delegated grades or SCS staff for the 2020/21 and 2021/22 performance years. The following table shows the number of performance reviews undertaken by the UKHSA and the MHRA in the last five years:
| UKHSA | MHRA | ||
Year | SCS | Delegated grades | SCS | Delegated grades |
2020/21 | 446 | Not recorded | Not recorded | Not recorded |
2021/22 | 237 | Not recorded | Not recorded | Not recorded |
2022/23 | 172 | Not recorded | 78 | 837 |
2023/24 | 145 | Not recorded | 108 | 1,024 |
2024/25 | 118 | 1,518 | 134 | 1,272 |
In addition, the following table shows how many were rated as unsatisfactory or below, or the equivalent ratings used by the relevant organisations, on each occasion, for each of the last five years:
| UKHSA | MHRA | ||
Year | SCS | Delegated grades | SCS | Delegated grades |
2020/21 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2021/22 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
2022/23 | [c]* | 0 | 0 | < 10 |
2023/24 | [c]* | 0 | [c]* | < 10 |
2024/25 | [c]* | 39 | [c]* | 12 |
Note: *[c] means confidential and suppressed due to small numbers of less than five.
The UKHSA does not hold data on how many staff left as a result of an unsatisfactory performance rating. The following table shows the number of full time equivalent (FTE) staff at the MHRA and the percentage of the staff who left due to unsatisfactory ratings, for each of the last five years:
| 2020/21 | 2021/22 | 2022/23 | 2023/24 | 2024/25 |
Total organisation FTE staff | 1,334 | 1,097.2 | 1,152 | 1,294.1 | 1,456.4 |
Percentage of FTE staff who left due to unsatisfactory rating | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% | 0% |
Asked by: Neil O'Brien (Conservative - Harborough, Oadby and Wigston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many staff in his Department (a) did not retain employment following the completion of their probationary period and (b) had their probationary period extended in each of the last five years.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department’s probation policy and guidance advises managers on the steps to take to assess a new employee’s suitability for the post and to provide support to enable them to succeed. It also advises on the steps to take where performance, attendance, or conduct are not satisfactory. This can include exiting the employee or extending their probation to provide further evidence for a final decision on their suitability.
The number of staff in the Department who did not retain employment following the completion of their probationary period, and those whose probationary period was extended, in each of the last five years is set out below:
- in 2025, four staff did not retain employment and four had their probationary period extended;
- in 2024, two staff did not retain employment and two had their probationary period extended;
- in 2023, there were no staff who did not retain employment and no staff had their probationary period extended;
- in 2022, four staff did not retain employment and three had their probationary period extended;
- in 2021, one staff member did not retain employment and one had their probationary period extended.
Asked by: Scott Arthur (Labour - Edinburgh South West)
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 ensure timely access to chemosaturation for patients with metastatic ocular (uveal) melanoma.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department remains committed to ensuring that cancer patients, including those with metastatic ocular melanoma, have timely access to treatment and tailored medical support.
In 2016, NHS England concluded that there was insufficient evidence to make chemosaturation treatment available to patients on the National Health Service. NHS England is currently in the early stages of policy development for chemosaturation to treat metastatic uveal melanoma where surgery to remove or destroy affected cells and tissue in the liver is not feasible.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has published an Interventional Procedure Guidance for this treatment, and while this does allow NHS trusts to offer the treatment locally, they can only do so if they put in place special arrangements for clinical governance, consent, audit, or research, because further evidence of benefit and safety is needed. The 2016 NHS England Clinical Commissioning policy is currently under review, and we expect that a new draft policy will be shared with stakeholders over the coming months. If NHS England’s clinical panel makes the treatment routinely available across the NHS in England it will require further consideration through relative prioritisation and investment before full roll out.
The development of a Clinical Commissioning policy will determine both if the evidence is now sufficient to enable making the treatment routinely available and, if it is, whether to allocate service development funding to implement it across the NHS in England.
Asked by: Jim Shannon (Democratic Unionist Party - Strangford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of deaths in hospital.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is prioritising patient safety and a learning culture in the National Health Service to prevent harmful events from happening to patients. The NHS Patient Safety Strategy, originally published in 2019, and updated in 2021 and 2023, includes key programmes to support the NHS to improve patient safety continuously and reduce patient harm. Further information on the NHS Patient Safety Strategy is available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/the-nhs-patient-safety-strategy/
As part of this, the Patient Safety Incident Response Framework reforms the way providers respond to patient safety incidents, with further information available at the following link:
In addition, the Learn From Patient Safety Events service also enables the NHS to learn from more than three million patient safety incidents reported annually, including through the development of machine learning and artificial intelligence tools for analysis. Further information on the Learn From Patient Safety Events service is available at the following link:
Other examples of key patient safety initiatives include rollout of Martha’s Rule, with further information available at the following link:
https://www.england.nhs.uk/patient-safety/marthas-rule/
From September 2024 to July 2025, this policy has resulted in changes in treatment for roughly 1,000 patients, with more than 260 patients requiring transfers of care to high dependency or intensive care units, enhanced levels of care, or a tertiary centre. The Government also introduced the statutory medical examiner system from September 2024 which means that medical examiners independently scrutinise every death in England and Wales not referred to a coroner. This is estimated as more than half a million deaths in 12 months. Medical examiners support local learning and improvement by detecting and referring concerns through established local clinical governance processes.
Asked by: Neil Shastri-Hurst (Conservative - Solihull West and Shirley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that concerns raised by NHS whistleblowers on patient safety are (a) recorded, (b) escalated and (c) reviewed.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
There are a number of avenues through which healthcare workers can speak up and raise concerns, with established procedures in place to record, act on, and escalate issues as needed.
In England, more than 1,300 Freedom to Speak Up Guardians now support staff in speaking up. Their role involves working alongside governance, risk, and safety teams to ensure that speaking up translates into improvements in patient care, as well as identifying patterns and trends, for example, in patient safety incidents. Freedom to Speak Up Guardians collect and report anonymised data on the issues raised with them, including patient safety. This data is published by the National Guardian’s Office at the following link:
https://nationalguardian.org.uk/learning-resources/speaking-up-data/
The National Guardian’s Office and NHS England are ‘prescribed persons’, authorised to receive protected disclosures, including those in relation to safety and quality concerns. They are legally required to publish annual reports on protected disclosures and their outcomes.
Every National Health Service organisation in England should be following the national Freedom to Speak Up policy, which outlines minimum standards for handling and addressing concerns. This policy ensures that all reported concerns are considered carefully and investigated objectively when necessary.
Asked by: Victoria Collins (Liberal Democrat - Harpenden and Berkhamsted)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to transfer oversight of cannabis-based medicinal products to the Department of Health and Social Care.
Answered by Sarah Jones - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office is the lead department for controlled drug legislation. The Department for Health and Social care and its arms’ length bodies, including the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (‘MHRA’), have responsibility for healthcare and medicines policy.
The Government has no plans to change this. The two departments work together with the MHRA and other agencies on issues related to the use of controlled drugs in healthcare and therefore share responsibility for policy and governance relating to cannabis-based medicinal products.
Asked by: Joe Robertson (Conservative - Isle of Wight East)
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 tackle increases in legal costs for clinical negligence.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The rising costs of clinical negligence claims against the National Health Service in England are of great concern to the Government. Costs have more than doubled in the last 10 years and are forecast to continue rising, putting further pressure on NHS finances.
As announced in the recently published 10-Year Health Plan for England, David Lock KC will be providing expert policy advice on the rising legal costs of clinical negligence and how we can improve patients’ experience of claims, ahead of a review by the Department in the autumn.
The results of David Lock’s work will inform future policy making in this area. No decisions on policy have been taken at this point, and the Government will provide an update on the work done and next steps in due course.