Asked by: Bob Blackman (Conservative - Harrow East)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what discussions he has had with the Mayor of London on licensing electric black cabs.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Whilst the Secretary of State for Transport has not had any direct discussion with the Mayor of London on licensing electric taxis, revised best practice guidance was issued to all licensing authorities in November last year recommending they enable as many types of vehicles as possible to be licensed. Licensing authorities should give very careful consideration to a policy that automatically rules out particular types of vehicle or prescribes only one type or a small number of types of vehicle.
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 her Department is taking to increase the public's awareness of the side effects that can arise from taking weight loss drugs such as Ozempic.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) plays a pivotal role in ensuring the safety, efficacy, and quality of medicines and healthcare products available to patients in the United Kingdom. Patient safety remains the MHRA’s highest priority, and they take every opportunity to encourage reporting of any safety concerns to the Yellow Card scheme, which helps to improve the safe use of medicines and medical devices for everyone.
New medicines including, Mounjaro and Wegovy, are intensively monitored to ensure that any new safety concerns are identified promptly. The Commission on Human Medicines and the MHRA encourages the reporting of all suspected reactions to newer drugs and vaccines, which are denoted by an inverted Black Triangle symbol. This symbol appears next to the name of a relevant product in drug safety updates, the British National Formulary and the Nurse Prescribers’ Formulary, the monthly index of medical specialities, the electronic medicines compendium, and advertising material. Patient information leaflets accompanying licensed medicines in the UK must include a description of the adverse reactions which may occur in normal use of the medicinal product, as well as information on how to report them. All adverse reactions must be reflected in the leaflet, in language that the patient will understand.
The MHRA has received a small number of reports of falsified and unlicenced medicines being sold illegally online as a treatment for weight loss. The agency has issued public health messaging warning of the dangers of buying such medicines from illegal trading sources online.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps his Department is taking to tackle violence and sexual offences in Preston.
Answered by Laura Farris - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Ministry of Justice) (jointly with Home Office)
As part of steps taken through our Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy and Tackling Domestic Abuse Plan, we are tackling perpetrators and supporting victims.
We have provided funding to the Lancashire PCC to roll out the Drive Project, which focuses on the most serious domestic abuse offenders to prevent them from abusing again, and funded Preston based Saraha to provide bilingual, comprehensive, face-to-face support service for women from black and minority ethnic backgrounds who are victims of domestic abuse.
Nationally, we have invested £9.4 million to develop a New Operation Model for the investigation of rape through Operation Soteria. This ensures investigations are suspect based. All police forces in England and Wales are now implementing this new approach to rape investigations and we have provided £8.5m in 2023/24 to continue to support policing to improve their response to rape.
Through the Safer Streets and Safety of Women at Night Funds, we have invested over £150 million to deliver interventions to tackle violence against women, anti-social behaviour and neighbourhood crime.
This includes just over £3.4m for Lancashire, of which £146,568 has been awarded to Preston City Council to fund interventions such as the installation of CCTV, the deployment of taxi stewards and night-time economy sector training, along with improvements to accommodation for services assisting women at risk and recovery services for victims of sexual violence.
Since 2019, the Home Office has provided over £8m for a Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) in Lancashire. VRUs bring together local partners to understand and tackle the drivers of serious violence in their area, including sexual abuse and domestic abuse.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
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 improve breast cancer outcomes amongst Black women.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing inequalities and improving breast cancer outcomes for ethnic minority women, including black women, is a priority for the Government. To support this work, NHS England has commissioned six new cancer clinical audits, which will provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatments and outcomes for patients, including metastatic breast cancer. The Royal College of Surgeons began work on this audit in October 2022, and the first outcomes are expected in September 2024.
NHS England is also leading a programme of work to tackle healthcare inequalities centred around five clear priorities, which are set out in operational planning guidance for the health system. The Core20PLUS5 approach for adults has been rolled out as an NHS England framework to focus action on reducing inequalities on issues within the National Health Services’ direct influence, which are major contributors to inequalities in life expectancy through major conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and others, or Long-Term Plan priorities where stark inequalities are evident, such as maternity or severe mental illness.
The key actions for systems as highlighted in NHS England’s planning guidance for 2024/25 is to continue to deliver against the five strategic priorities for tackling health inequalities. Additionally, by the end of June 2024, NHS England aims to publish joined-up action plans to address health inequalities, and implement the Core20PLUS5 approach.
Improving earlier diagnosis of cancers, including breast cancer, is also a priority for the Government. The NHS has an ambition to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, which will help tens of thousands of people live for longer. Additionally, the new cancer standards developed and supported by cancer doctors and implemented in October 2023, will ensure patients are diagnosed faster, and that treatment starts earlier. In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced that it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years, to support the delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer, which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity.
Whilst the Major Conditions Strategy does not seek to describe everything that is being done, or could be done, to meet the challenges of individual conditions in silo, it instead focuses on the changes likely to make the most difference across the six groups of major conditions, including cancer.
Asked by: Dawn Butler (Labour - Brent Central)
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 help ensure the Major Conditions Strategy improves breast cancer outcomes for ethnic minority women.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Reducing inequalities and improving breast cancer outcomes for ethnic minority women, including black women, is a priority for the Government. To support this work, NHS England has commissioned six new cancer clinical audits, which will provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary, increase the consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatments and outcomes for patients, including metastatic breast cancer. The Royal College of Surgeons began work on this audit in October 2022, and the first outcomes are expected in September 2024.
NHS England is also leading a programme of work to tackle healthcare inequalities centred around five clear priorities, which are set out in operational planning guidance for the health system. The Core20PLUS5 approach for adults has been rolled out as an NHS England framework to focus action on reducing inequalities on issues within the National Health Services’ direct influence, which are major contributors to inequalities in life expectancy through major conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease, and others, or Long-Term Plan priorities where stark inequalities are evident, such as maternity or severe mental illness.
The key actions for systems as highlighted in NHS England’s planning guidance for 2024/25 is to continue to deliver against the five strategic priorities for tackling health inequalities. Additionally, by the end of June 2024, NHS England aims to publish joined-up action plans to address health inequalities, and implement the Core20PLUS5 approach.
Improving earlier diagnosis of cancers, including breast cancer, is also a priority for the Government. The NHS has an ambition to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, which will help tens of thousands of people live for longer. Additionally, the new cancer standards developed and supported by cancer doctors and implemented in October 2023, will ensure patients are diagnosed faster, and that treatment starts earlier. In the 2023/24 Operational Planning Guidance, NHS England announced that it is providing over £390 million in cancer service development funding to Cancer Alliances in each of the next two years, to support the delivery of the strategy and the operational priorities for cancer, which includes increasing and prioritising diagnostic and treatment capacity.
Whilst the Major Conditions Strategy does not seek to describe everything that is being done, or could be done, to meet the challenges of individual conditions in silo, it instead focuses on the changes likely to make the most difference across the six groups of major conditions, including cancer.
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 she is taking to improve early intervention for mental health conditions in working-age adults.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The £795 million of additional funding announced in the Autumn Statement will see thousands of working-age adults with mental ill health helped back into work over the next five years, keeping them out of poverty, improving their wellbeing, and raising their living standards.
This will increase the number of sessions per course of Talking Therapies treatment, to tackle the root causes of common mental health conditions like anxiety and depression and to broaden access, leading to an expected additional 384,000 people completing a course of treatment by 2028/29.
The investment will also fund an additional 100,000 Individual Placement and Support places over five years, which will help people with severe mental illness gain and retain paid employment.
Between 2019 and 2022, total number of NHS Talking Therapies staff across England, including clinical and non-clinical, has risen by 38%. NHS England has published a positive practice guide for NHS Talking Therapies staff working with those from black and ethnic minority groups, which is helping providers take appropriate action to ensure that communities have equality of access to NHS Talking Therapies
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what plans they have to prioritise research into variation of the prevalence of prostate cancer among different ethnic groups.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department welcomes the recently announced TRANSFORM trial which aims to save thousands of men each year by finding the best way to screen for prostate cancer across all ethnic groups. It will be spread across the United Kingdom, although final decisions on specific locations are yet to be taken. Men will be invited to participate via their general practices. This study, led by Prostate Cancer UK and supported by the Government among others, will also aim to address some of the inequalities that exist in prostate cancer diagnosis today by ensuring that one in ten of the trial participants will be black men, who are three times overrepresented compared to the population of men aged between 45 and 75 years old as based on 2021 census data.
More broadly, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) funds research in response to proposals received from scientists and commissioned calls rather than allocating funding to specific disease areas. It welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including prostate cancer. 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.
In addition, to raise awareness of prostate cancer in this group, Leicester’s Centre for BME Health has developed a toolkit in partnership with the NIHR with guidance on how to start conversations about prostate cancer and overcome barriers to diagnosis.
Asked by: Preet Kaur Gill (Labour (Co-op) - Birmingham, Edgbaston)
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 tackle the sale of illegal vapes on the black market.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is concerned about the worrying rise in vaping among children, with youth vaping tripling in the last three years, and one-in-five children having now used a vape. Underage sales and illicit vapes are undermining the work the Government is doing to protect our children's health.
To address this, in April 2023, the Government announced a £3 million investment over two years to enhance work on illicit vape enforcement. Led by National Trading Standards, this builds on existing work by local trading standards officers across the country to ensure that vapes sold in the United Kingdom comply with The Tobacco and Related Products Regulations 2016, as well as other relevant legislation that applies to vaping products. Activities include data collection and analysis to understand the scale of illegal products and sales, and market surveillance work. Through this work, they identified that 2.1 million illicit vapes were seized across England by trading standards from 2022 to 2023.
To strengthen our enforcement activity, the Government will also provide an additional £30 million of funding per year for enforcement agencies, including trading standards. This increase in investment will help to stamp out criminal activity by boosting the enforcement of illicit tobacco and vapes.
Asked by: Kim Leadbeater (Labour - Batley and Spen)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, if he will hold discussions with car insurance providers on the cost of insurance for young drivers.
Answered by Guy Opperman - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
Department for Transport officials regularly liaise with representatives of the motor insurance industry on a variety of issues such as the cost of insurance. However, it is the responsibility of individual motor insurers to set premiums and the terms and conditions of their policies, and the Government does not intervene or seek to control the market.
The Government is determined that insurers should treat customers fairly and firms are required to do so under the Financial Conduct Authority rules.
There is evidence to suggest that younger drivers and those with less experience carry a higher risk. Some insurers have introduced the use of telematics or in-car black boxes to allow better risk-based pricing of insurance, especially for new drivers. It means insurers now have a real time data feed, which allows them to see an individual’s driving behaviour; this had not been possible in the past. This can help reduce insurance premiums if drivers show good driving behaviour with a black box installed in their cars.
Asked by: Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they are satisfied that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency undertook a sufficiently rigorous approach to the licensing of montelukast, in view of the US Food and Drug Administration’s black box warning about its use.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) actively reviews the safety and efficacy of medicines throughout their life cycle. As well as through the licensing process itself, this is done via the Yellow Card safety reporting system, the actions of other international regulators, and patient feedback.
The MHRA updated the United Kingdom’s product information on using montelukast in 2019, to provide clearer warnings about the risk of neuropsychiatric side effects. The MHRA is currently conducting a further review of the safety data, and will communicate any changes when that review is concluded.