Asked by: Rachael Maskell (Labour (Co-op) - York Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care on levels of ill health caused by contact with sewage contaminated water.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Secretary of State has regular discussions with Cabinet colleagues on a wide range of issues, and Cabinet discussions are considered confidential.
Defra and Department of Health and Social Care officials have had and continue to have ongoing conversations about the public health impacts of contact with sewage contaminated water and how to manage the risks going forward.
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 discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on improving infection prevention and control practices in animals.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The Government takes a One Health approach to infection prevention and control, and antimicrobial resistance, as set out in the UK National Action Plan on antimicrobial resistance (NAP AMR) for 2019 to 2024. The UK NAP AMR delivery board is co-chaired by senior officials from the Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs.
Officials from the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, and the Veterinary Medicines Directorate meet regularly to consider appropriate actions to promote good animal health, welfare, and biosecurity in the animal health sector. This is done in accordance with the Government’s One-Health approach, to mitigating the risk of transmission of zoonotic infections between animals and humans, and to tackle the threat of antimicrobial resistance. A zoonosis is any disease or infection that is naturally transmissible from vertebrate animals to humans.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool, West Derby)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, when he expects the Food Data Transparency Partnership Eco Working Group to produce its report detailing proposals to measure and communicate carbon emissions in the food system.
Answered by Mark Spencer - Minister of State (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Food Data Transparency Partnership (FDTP) was established in early 2023, as a means to work jointly across Defra, the Food Standards Agency, the Department of Health and Social Care, industry, academia and civil society. The FDTP aims to drive positive change in the food system through better and more transparent food data. On environmental sustainability, the FDTP has focused on the approach needed to deliver consistent, accurate and accessible data on quantifying and communicating the environmental impact of food across the agri-food system. This will support our agri-food industry to remain internationally competitive in the context of global growing demand for data on environmental impacts associated with products or services sold.
The FDTP Eco Working Group continues to develop the detail of proposals to measure and communicate greenhouse gas emissions in the food system. The group has identified several interim priorities for the short and medium term. These will be communicated to industry as part of the FDTP's continued programme of engagement.
Asked by: Lisa Nandy (Labour - Wigan)
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 help improve access to defibrillators.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease is a priority for the Government. We want people to have the best chance of survival from cardiac arrest, and rapid intervention is central to improving outcomes. Therefore, the Government wants to increase the number of publicly accessible automated external defibrillators (AEDs).
This is why the Government has announced The Community Automated External Defibrillators Fund, with a £1 million investment that will increase the number of AEDs within England. We want to ensure AEDs are located where they are needed most. Applications that are submitted for funding are assessed to ensure that each AED is installed in areas where there is a clear need for the device, such as high footfall areas or rural locations with extended ambulance response times. Priority will also be given to applications that are considered a cardiac health hotspot, with high levels of deprivation and low numbers of AEDs within the local area.
Asked by: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)
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 increase access to defibrillators in rural communities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease is a priority for the Government. We want people to have the best chance of survival from cardiac arrest, and rapid intervention is central to improving outcomes. This is why the Government wants to increase the number of publicly accessible automated external defibrillators. The Government has therefore announced the Community Automated External Defibrillators (AED) Fund, with a £1 million investment that will increase the number of AEDs within England. We want to ensure AEDs are located where they are needed most. Applications that are submitted for funding are assessed to ensure that each AED is installed in areas where there is a clear need for the device, such as high footfall areas or rural locations with extended ambulance response times. Priority will also be given to applications that are considered a cardiac health hotspot, with high levels of deprivation and low numbers of AEDs within the local area.
Asked by: Neil Hudson (Conservative - Penrith and The Border)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps the Government is taking to help improve access to care homes in rural communities.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
Under the Care Act, local authorities are tasked with the duty to shape their care market to meet the diverse needs of all local people. Last year we launched Care Quality Commission assurance of local authorities’ delivery of their Care Act duties, and all local authorities will be assessed over the next two years. We have also committed to setting national standards for commissioners and are investing in a pilot training programme for senior commissioners to improve practice and drive more consistency at local level.
The Government has also made available up to £8.6 billion in additional funding over two years to support adult social care and discharge. This includes nearly £2 billion over two years specifically through the Market Sustainability and Improvement Fund (MSIF) and MSIF Workforce Fund. Both are designed to support increased adult social care capacity and improvements to adult social care services.
Asked by: Steve Reed (Labour (Co-op) - Croydon North)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Fourth Report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee of Session 2022-23 on Rural Mental Health, HC248, published on 9 May 2023, what progress his Department has made on implementing the recommendations in the section entitled Rural mental health service provision, policy and strategy development.
Answered by Robbie Moore - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
We remain committed to supporting thriving rural communities, as set out in our report Unleashing Rural Opportunity, published in June 2023.
Since the launch of the EFRA Committee’s inquiry in 2021, considerable progress has been made to help ensure access to mental health services in rural areas. The Government published its Response to the EFRA Committee Report on Rural Mental Health in October 2023.
The response recognised that people living and working in rural areas may face specific challenges in accessing the mental health services that they need and set out the various actions being taken forward to address mental health needs.
Key actions include:
To help improve the service and support on offer to farmers we will make up to £500,000 available to deliver projects that support mental health in the farming sector. This will build on the support already on offer through the Farming Resilience Fund, which has benefitted over 19,000 farmers to date.
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, whether she is taking steps to promote research on diabetes health inequalities in rural communities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department commissions research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health, including diabetes and health inequalities.
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, whether she is taking steps to promote collaboration between (a) the NHS, (b) community organisations and (c) health experts to tackle diabetes health inequalities.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The NHS Diabetes Programme (NDP) develops policies and provides leadership and support to integrated care boards (ICBs), to improve diabetes care and outcomes. The NDP routinely engages with people with firsthand experience of diabetes, sector stakeholders, and health experts in order to inform policy, and seeks input from a broad range of communities to support development of projects that aim to tackle variation and inequalities.
The NDP collaborates extensively with Diabetes UK, who conducts research with people who have lived experience of diabetes on behalf of the programme, for specific projects, and participates in the programme’s decision making at a board level. The NDP has also collaborated with Diabetes UK’s Tackling Inequality Commission, which engaged with communities, community organisations, and health experts. A report was released of the findings in November 2023.
The National Health Service statement on information on health inequalities sets out a description of the powers available to relevant NHS bodies to collect, analyse, and publish information, and the views of NHS England about how those powers should be exercised. The following diabetes metrics are included: the care process delivery, measuring variation between the percentage of people with type 1 and type 2 diabetes receiving all eight care processes, reported by deprivation and ethnicity; and the NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme, measuring variation between the percentage of NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme referrals from the most deprived quintile and the percentage of the type 2 diabetic population from the most deprived quintile.
ICBs and other NHS bodies will be required to include in their annual reports for 2023/24 and 2024/25, information that shows they have exercised their functions in accordance with the NHS legal statement. They will also need to publish reports on the information collected, how the data has been used to guide action, and summarise the inequalities it reveals.
The NDP ensures local health care systems, including those with rural communities, can benchmark and identify inequalities in diabetes care and outcomes through National Diabetes Audit data that contains demographic information such as age, deprivation, and ethnicity. Examples of the data can be found in the National Diabetes Audit Dashboards. The NDP also allocates funding to support the costs of diabetes clinical lead posts in local health systems, with a key priority of supporting improvement in addressing health inequalities at the local level.
Asked by: Craig Whittaker (Conservative - Calder Valley)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether she has considered the potential merits of introducing a retailer licensing scheme for the sale of vapes.
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. Youth vaping has tripled in the last three years, and one in five children now use a vape. To address this, we recently published our response to the smoking and vaping consultation, which sets out our plan to restrict vape flavours, point of sale display, and packaging. The response is available at the following link:
We also set out our plans to introduce an age of sale requirement for non-nicotine vapes and other consumer nicotine products, as well as a £100 fixed penalty notice for underage sales of tobacco and vaping products. In addition, the consultation response announced that disposable vapes will be banned, which will be taken forward by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs. The Government will introduce legislation as soon as possible.
Whilst there are no current plans to introduce a retail licensing scheme, we have announced £30 million of additional funding per year to tackle illicit and underage sales of tobacco and vape products. In April last year, we also provided funding for a new enforcement unit to tackle the illegal and underage sale of vapes, which has conducted targeted inspections in ports, upskilled trading standards officers, and piloted online underage test programmes.