Asked by: Lord Weir of Ballyholme (Democratic Unionist Party - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much funding they have provided to target educational underachievement in each of the last five years.
Answered by Baroness Barran - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
The great majority of school funding in England is allocated through the National Funding Formula (NFF).
The NFF allocates 17.4% of all funding in 2022/23 through additional needs factors to target pupils most likely to fall behind and need extra support. Alongside the NFF, the Pupil Premium provides additional funding to help schools tackle educational underachievement by children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The total funding directed through the NFF’s additional needs factors and through the Pupil Premium over the last five years is shown in the attached table.
Within the figures attached, the low prior attainment factor (LPA) in the NFF specifically targets pupils who did not reach the expected standard at the previous stage. The table attached also shows the amount of funding provided to schools in England through the LPA factor in the schools NFF over the last five years.
The department is also focusing on recovering from the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic through an ambitious multi-year programme and has made available almost £5 billion for recovery since 2020.
Asked by: Mark Pritchard (Conservative - The Wrekin)
Question
To ask the Member for South West Bedfordshire, representing the Church Commissioners, what support the Church Commissioners are giving to churches in the dioceses of Hereford and Lichfield to help protect the written and oral history and heritage of churches.
Answered by Andrew Selous - Second Church Estates Commissioner
There are no specific written or oral history heritage projects supported by the Church Commissioners in the dioceses of Hereford and Lichfield. However the Cathedral and Church Buildings Division of the Archbishops’ Council is in regular contact with parishes across the region to support them in the care of their buildings and local community heritage assets. More general advice is available from the ChurchCare website: https://www.churchofengland.org/resources/churchcare which gives information about grants, building management and best practice.
Across England the Church of England manages 12,500 listed buildings out of a total of 16,000 churches. Many of these are considered to be nationally important buildings and are maintained by the generosity and goodwill of local volunteers and donors.
The Church Commissioners are providing £11million in funding for 2023-25 to support a new “Buildings for Mission” programme to provide support, through dioceses, to local parishes with the challenges they face in maintaining their church buildings
The Church is grateful to the Government for its support for cathedrals and major churches during the pandemic when the Culture Recovery Fund made over £60.6m available to 582 parishes and cathedrals. The Church advocates for the continuation of the Listed Places of Worship Grant Scheme, worth up to £42m a year, until a suitable alternative can be found. The National Church Institutions are working closely with Government, heritage partners and philanthropic funders, and the National Lottery Heritage Fund in response to its recent strategic review and has continuing dialogue with Government about the financial needs involved in maintanining such important places of worship.
The Church awaits the response of the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to the recommendations made by the Government’s independent review led by Bernard Taylor into the sustainability of Church buildings, which was published in 2017: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/english-churches-and-cathedrals-sustainability-review
Asked by: Marsha De Cordova (Labour - Battersea)
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 NHS ambulance waiting times in England.
Answered by Will Quince
A range of measures are in place to reduce ambulance response times. The NHS winter resilience plan will increase NHS bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, helping reduce pressure in A&E so that ambulances can get swiftly back out on the road.
An additional £250 million has been made available to enable the NHS to buy up beds in the community to safely discharge thousands of patients from hospital, and capital for discharge lounges and ambulance hubs. This will improve flow through hospitals and reducing waits to handover ambulance patients. This is on top of the £500 million already invested last year.
NHS England has allocated £150 million of additional system funding for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, alongside £20 million of capital funding to upgrade the ambulance fleet in each year to 2024/25.
As announced in the Autumn Statement, the government is investing an additional £3.3 billion in each of 2023-24 and 2024-25 to enable rapid action to improve urgent and emergency, elective, and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. The NHS will soon set out detailed recovery plans to deliver faster ambulance response times.
Asked by: Greg Knight (Conservative - East Yorkshire)
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 reduce ambulance response times for emergencies in East Yorkshire.
Answered by Will Quince
A range of measures are in place to reduce ambulance response times, including in East Yorkshire. The National Health Service winter resilience plan will increase NHS bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, helping reduce pressure in accident and emergency so that ambulances can get swiftly back out on the road.
An additional £250 million has been made available to enable the NHS to buy up beds in the community to safely discharge thousands of patients from hospital and capital for discharge lounges and ambulance hubs. This will improve flow through hospitals and reducing waits to handover ambulance patients. This is on top of the £500 million already invested last year.
NHS England has allocated £150 million of additional system funding for ambulance service pressures in 2022/23, alongside £20 million of capital funding to upgrade the ambulance fleet in each year to 2024/25.
As announced in the Autumn Statement, the Government is investing an additional £3.3 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25 to enable rapid action to improve urgent and emergency, elective, and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. The NHS will soon set out detailed recovery plans to deliver faster ambulance response times.
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, what steps he is taking to reduce the ambulance response times for (a) strokes and (b) other category 2 emergencies; and what consideration he has given to adding strokes to category 1 emergencies.
Answered by Will Quince
As announced in the Autumn Statement, the Government is investing an additional £3.3 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25 to enable to enable rapid action to improve urgent and emergency, elective, and primary care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. In the coming weeks the National Health Service will set out detailed recovery plans to deliver faster ambulance response times.
This is in addition to significant investment in NHS and social care capacity to help improve patient flow and reduce ambulance handover delays. The NHS winter resilience plan will increase NHS bed capacity by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, and an additional £250 million has been made available to enable the NHS to buy up beds in the community to safely discharge thousands of patients from hospital, and capital for discharge lounges and ambulance hubs. This is on top of the £500 million already invested last year.
No such consideration of strokes has been made by the Department. The clinical prioritisation of 999 calls is an operational matter for the ambulance service.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of Exeter (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the cost effectiveness of Evusheld in the treatment of immuno-compromised persons with complex health needs against the cost of an admission to hospital, given the increase in COVID-19 hospital admissions and the pressure on the NHS.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The decision not to procure Evusheld for prevention through emergency routes is not based on cost considerations, but rather on independent clinical advice by RAPID C-19 (a multi-agency group) and a UK National Expert Policy Working Group. These groups considered a full range of evidence, including clinical trial data, in vitro analysis and emerging observational studies, as well as the epidemiological context of Omicron and wider policies in the Government’s pandemic response and recovery. Their conclusion is that there is insufficient evidence of benefit to recommend deployment at this time.
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is now conducting a Health Technology Evaluation of Evusheld, which is the routine process for new medicines to be evaluated for clinical and cost effectiveness and will provide recommendations through NICE’s guidance on the use of Evusheld in the National Health Service.
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 statement made by Daren Mochrie of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives in oral evidence to the Health and Social Care Select Committee on 20 December 2022 that NHS England is working on a revised or a new urgent and emergency care strategy, what the scope of that strategy is; and what he expects it will achieve.
Answered by Will Quince
NHS England will publish its urgent and emergency care recovery plan in early 2023. These plans will set out detailed ambitions for recovery to deliver improved ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average over 2023/24, with further improvement towards pre-pandemic levels in 2024/25 and year-on-year improvements in Accident and Emergency waiting times over 2023/24 and 2024/25.
The Recovery Plan is the focus of NHS England’s strategy work at the current time. We will continue to consider the longer-term strategy for Urgent and Emergency Care in the light of this document and progress in delivering against it.
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 statement made by Daren Mochrie of the Association of Ambulance Chief Executives in oral evidence to the Health and Social Care Select Committee on 20 December 2022 that NHS England is working on a revised or a new urgent and emergency care strategy, when he expects to publish that strategy.
Answered by Will Quince
NHS England will publish its urgent and emergency care recovery plan in early 2023. These plans will set out detailed ambitions for recovery to deliver improved ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents to 30 minutes on average over 2023/24, with further improvement towards pre-pandemic levels in 2024/25 and year-on-year improvements in Accident and Emergency waiting times over 2023/24 and 2024/25.
The Recovery Plan is the focus of NHS England’s strategy work at the current time. We will continue to consider the longer-term strategy for Urgent and Emergency Care in the light of this document and progress in delivering against it.
Asked by: Emma Hardy (Labour - Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle)
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 improve (a) ambulance handover times outside NHS hospitals and (b) A&E waiting times.
Answered by Will Quince
A range of measures are in place. The National Health Service has set out a plan to substantially increase capacity and resilience this winter. NHS bed capacity will be increased by the equivalent of at least 7,000 general and acute beds, helping reduce waits for admission from accident and emergency.
On 9 January, the Government announced £200 million to improve patient discharge and free up hospital beds, on top of the £500 million Adult Social Care Discharge Fund announced in December 2022. An additional £50 million in capital funding is being made to expand hospital discharge lounges and ambulance hubs to improve patient flow through hospitals, freeing up space in accident and emergency, and allowing ambulances to swiftly get back on the roads.
The Autumn Statement provides an additional £3.3 billion of NHS funding in both 2023/24 and 2024/25, enabling rapid action to improve urgent and emergency care performance toward pre-pandemic levels. The NHS will set out detailed recovery plans in the coming weeks, including ambitions to improve ambulance response times for Category 2 incidents and deliver year-on-year improvements in accident and emergency waiting times.
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 he plans to take to respond to increasing demand for the Ambulance Service.
Answered by Will Quince
The Autumn Statement provides an additional £3.3 billion in each of 2023/24 and 2024/25 to enable rapid action to improve urgent and emergency care performance towards pre-pandemic levels. The National Health Service is publishing recovery plans in the coming weeks to improve Category 2 ambulance response times to 30 minutes.
In addition, as announced on the 9 January, the Government is immediately making available an additional £50 million in capital funding to expand hospital discharge lounges and ambulance hubs. This will help with the increased demand on the ambulance service this winter by improving patient flow through hospitals and reducing handover delays.