Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the supply of rabies pre-exposure prophylaxis for UK residents travelling abroad as of 7 June 2023.
Answered by Will Quince
The Department has well established processes to manage and mitigate the small number of supply problems that may arise at any one time due to manufacturing or distribution issues.
Rabipur (rabies vaccine) is currently available but due to increased demand, the manufacturer is capping orders to help widen access to supply.
Asked by: David Mundell (Conservative - Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweeddale)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to ensure that (a) access to and (b) uptake of (i) PrEP and (ii) other HIV preventative measures is equitable across different groups.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
As part of our HIV Action Plan implementation, we are working together with key stakeholders to improve access to the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention drug pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for key population groups. The HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group is working to develop a roadmap, based on the PrEP Access and Equity Task and Finish group’s recommendations, to help guide our efforts to ensure access, uptake, and use of PrEP meets the needs of groups most at risk of HIV.
HIV PrEP is routinely available in specialist sexual health services throughout the country since March 2020 and we invested more than £34 million in PrEP in 2020/21 and 2021/22. PrEP funding has been fully included within the public health grant since 2022/23 and funds appointments and testing in sexual health services, whilst NHS England covers the costs of the drug itself.
As part of the HIV Action Plan and our combination approach to HIV prevention, we are investing £3.5 million over 2021 to 2024 in HIV Prevention England, a national HIV prevention programme targeting key population groups with a high burden of HIV. NHS England has committed £20 million, 2022 to 2025, to fund the expansion of HIV opt-out testing in emergency departments in areas with extremely high HIV prevalence, which has helped find more than 550 cases of undiagnosed or untreated HIV in the first year of the programme. Treatment as prevention is a key HIV prevention measure and treatment coverage in England remained high in 2021 at 99% and was consistent across all groups.
Asked by: Priti Patel (Conservative - Witham)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will review the adequacy of processes to expedite new preventative treatments for covid-19 in order to support people who are at higher risk of ill health through contracting that disease.
Answered by Will Quince
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent, expert body responsible for developing authoritative, evidence-based recommendations for the National Health Service on whether new medicines represent a clinically and cost-effective use of resources. NICE is responsible for the processes it uses in developing its recommendations.
New medicines for COVID-19 that are referred to NICE will be evaluated through NICE’s technology appraisal process. NICE aims to publish guidance within 90 days of marketing authorisation being issued by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency wherever possible and works with stakeholders to align its appraisal timelines with the regulatory process.
NICE is developing a new review process to update its recommendations on the clinical and cost-effectiveness of COVID-19 treatments so they can be made available more quickly to patients if they show promise against new variants and are found to be cost-effective. NICE recently ran a four week public consultation on proposals for the new rapid update process, which will apply to recommendations NICE has already published on COVID-19 treatments.
Asked by: Kirsten Oswald (Scottish National Party - East Renfrewshire)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer on 21 March 2023 to Question 167154 on sleep, when his Department plans to publish its response to the Advancing Our Health: Prevention in the 2020s consultation.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
The Department committed in Advancing Our Health: Prevention in the 2020s to review the evidence on sleep and health. Public Health England commissioned a series of reviews that are now complete.
More broadly, the Government announced on 24 January 2023 that it will publish a Major Conditions Strategy. The strategy will focus on conditions that contribute most to morbidity and mortality across the population in England, allowing us to focus our efforts on the key actions needed to achieve the Government’s manifesto commitment of gaining five extra years of healthy life expectancy by 2035. An interim report will be published in the summer. This work will take account of relevant responses to, and work carried out since, Advancing Our Health: Prevention in the 2020s.
Asked by: Florence Eshalomi (Labour (Co-op) - Vauxhall)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he is taking steps to ensure that funding for HIV (a) testing and (b) prevention is not allocated from funding for HIV care.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment and care, including its funding, fall under NHS England’s responsibility. The main funding for HIV testing and prevention is provided to local authorities in England through the public health grant, funded at £3.5 billion in 2023/24, through which they are mandated to commission comprehensive open access to most sexual health services, including free and confidential HIV testing, and provision of the HIV prevention drug PrEP. 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.
This is further supported by national initiatives under the Government’s HIV Action Plan. As part of the Plan, NHS England is investing £20 million over three years to implement opt-out HIV testing in Emergency Departments in local areas with extremely high HIV prevalence. This funding was not allocated from funding for HIV care. The Department is also investing over £3.5 million from 2021 to 2024 to deliver the National HIV Prevention Programme, to work alongside local prevention activities by developing resources for populations most affected by HIV.
Asked by: Baroness Merron (Labour - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask His Majesty's Government when they will publish their pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) Action Plan.
Answered by Lord Markham - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
As part of the implementation of the HIV Action Plan, we are developing a plan to improve equitable access to human immunodeficiency (HIV) virus pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for key population groups and in settings outside of specialist sexual health services. Recommendations of the PrEP Access and Equity Task and Finish Group, including key stakeholder and delivery partners, are being considered by the HIV Action Plan Implementation Steering Group, and the plan will be made available in 2023.
Asked by: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what role preventative public health policies will play in the context of the implementation of the Government's Major Disease and Conditions Strategy.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Major Conditions Strategy will apply a geographical lens to each condition in order to address regional disparities in health outcomes, supporting the levelling up mission to narrow the gap by 2030.
The Strategy will cover prevention to treatment for all six conditions and we will continue to work closely with stakeholders, citizens and the National Health Service in coming weeks to identify actions that will have the most impact.
Asked by: Clive Lewis (Labour - Norwich South)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment his Department has made of the role of walk-in centres in preventative healthcare.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
No specific assessment has been made. Although there is variation in nomenclature and services provided, Walk-in Centres are typically Type three accident and emergency services (similar to Urgent Treatment Centres, Minor Injury Units, or Urgent Care Centres). A defining characteristic of a service qualifying as a Type three department is that it treats at least minor injuries and illnesses and such services can involve elements of preventative advice relevant to a condition with which someone presents.
Asked by: Dan Carden (Labour - Liverpool, Walton)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the research by the Centre for Health Economics at York, entitled Is an Ounce of Prevention Worth a Pound of Cure? Estimates of the Impact of English Public Health Grant on Mortality and Morbidity, published July 2019, if he will make an assessment of the impact for his policies of the findings of that research.
Answered by Neil O'Brien
This study is one of the evidence sources that has been drawn on to inform decisions about funding for public health services. The 2021 Spending Review confirmed that the public health grant to local authorities would increase over the settlement period. In 2022/23, the Grant increased by 2.81% to £3.417 billion.
Asked by: Justin Madders (Labour - Ellesmere Port and Neston)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the timetable is for roll out of the R;pple tool for mental health outcomes.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
We have no plans to roll out the R;pple tool nationally.
NHS England is working with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence to develop a policy framework for digital health technologies to be assessed against, speeding up patient access to technologies that are proven to be safe and effective. The framework will be used to assess new and existing technologies, including those within mental health.