Tag: Heidi Alexander

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2015-12-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, when (a) his Department, (b) NHS England and (c) Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust first received a copy of the Mazers report on Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust.

Alistair Burt

A search of the Department’s Ministerial correspondence database has identified 40 items of correspondence expressing concerns about Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust. This figure represents correspondence received by the Department’s Ministerial correspondence unit only.

In 2014, NHS England initiated action including an investigation of the deaths of all patients of the trust who had been in receipt of mental health or learning disability services since 2011.

We are advised by NHS England that a first draft of the Mazars report was shared with it and Southern Health Foundation Trust in September 2015. The Department has not received a copy of the report and the report is still to be finalised before publication.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-02-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his oral contribution of 5 January 2016, Official Report, column 18, what the baseline year is for the commitment to train 10,000 more nurses, midwives and other allied health professionals over the course of the Parliament.

Ben Gummer

The Government has committed to remove the cap on the number of students studying nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions from 2017/18. This will enable universities to offer up to 10,000 additional places for students to start these courses by the end of the parliament.

The Department of Health, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills with health and education partners will work together prior to implementation in 2017 to determine how these additional places are appropriately baselined (and monitored) against those commissioned for National Health Service workforce planning purposes.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to ensure hospital trusts routinely collect and submit data on secondary breast cancer.

Jane Ellison

Public Health England (PHE) is responsible for collecting cancer data to support national cancer registration in England and recognises the importance of collecting data on recurrent breast cancer.

At present pilot work in acute trusts has improved the reporting for breast cancer recurrence and metastasis to the National Cancer Registration Service but the uptake has been slow and the data is not complete. Further work is being scoped by NHS England and PHE based on the recommendation in the recent Independent Cancer Taskforce report to establish robust surveillance systems to collect this data on all cancers.

Data on the number of people diagnosed with secondary breast cancer is not currently available.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-07-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidelines her Department has issued on the time to be taken by a Regional Schools Commissioner to name a sponsor for a school that has been issued with an Academy Order.

Edward Timpson

Since the Education and Adoption Act came into force in April 2016, the Secretary of State has been under a duty to make an Academy Order in respect of any maintained school that has been judged by Ofsted to be inadequate. Regional Schools Commissioners, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, ensure that the maintained school becomes a sponsored academy as swiftly as possible, after considering the circumstances in the school, and then identifying the most suitable sponsor.

No Academy Orders have been revoked to date.

143 Academy Orders have been made since the new duty came into force. It is too soon to give an annual average of how long it has taken to match a school to a sponsor under these new arrangements.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2015-12-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses were employed in each NHS region in the latest month for which figures are available.

Ben Gummer

The following table shows the number of full time equivalent nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff employed in each Health Education England region as at August 2015. The data is from the Health and Social Care Information Centre’s Hospital and Community Health Services monthly workforce statistics and does not include nurses working in general practice.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-02-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how much Health Education England spent on clinical placements for (a) nursing, (b) midwifery and (c) allied health students in the latest year for which figures are available.

Ben Gummer

Health Education England’s (HEE) planned clinical placement expenditure for the year 2015/16 is estimated as follows[1]:

(a) Nursing: £100 million

(b) Allied Health Professionals: £34 million

(c) Midwifery: £13 million

HEE is currently working towards a common coding structure to be applied by Local Educations and Training Boards to the composite parts of trust clinical placement payments to provide detailed breakdown of actual expenditure for healthcare trainees in future years.

[1] These figures are rounded to the nearest million.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-03-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if his Department will publish a patient-friendly guide to inform responses to the consultation on proposals for a new Cancer Drugs Fund.

George Freeman

NHS England and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence’s (NICE) consultation on draft proposals on the future of the Cancer Drugs Fund closed on 11 February 2016. The NHS England Board agreed a way forward, on 25 February 2016, which will see the new arrangements for the Fund going live on 1 July 2016.

NHS England and NICE adopted a number of different approaches to engage with audiences. This included holding four webinars for stakeholders and two face-to-face events in London and Manchester alongside a number of individual meetings with key stakeholder groups including patient organisations and cancer charities.

NHS England has advised that it will publish a consultation report on its website in due course. Further information is available at:

www.engage.england.nhs.uk/consultation/cdf-consultation

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will provide a list stating the value of each grant that has been awarded by her Department to each academy sponsor matched to a school with an Academy Order; and what the average value is of those grants that have been made under the provisions of the Education and Adoption Act 2016.

Edward Timpson

As of 24 October 2016, there have been 33 grant payments made as a result of an Academy Order being issued under the provisions of the Education and Adoption Act 2016. They consist of the following:

Grants Paid	Total
1 part payment of grant of £45,000	£45,000
22 grants of £70,000	£1,540,000
2 grants of £80,000	£160,000
7 grants of £90,000	£630,000
1 grant of £110,000	£110,000
Grand Total	£2,485,000

This brings an average cost of £75,303 supporting these sponsored academies. The details of the grant amounts can be found on page 4 of the Sponsored academies funding Advice for sponsors document. This guidance is published online and can be accessed via the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/511128/sponsored_academies_funding_advice_for_sponsors.pdf

This does not include any award of sponsor capacity fund (SCF) which may previously have been made to relevant sponsors as part of their developing greater capacity to support schools.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2015-12-09.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, how many nurses were employed in each Agenda for Change band in the latest month for which figures are available.

Ben Gummer

The latest information about the number of nurses employed in each Agenda for Change band is in the attached table.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Heidi Alexander on 2016-02-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what funding his Department has set aside for managing the transition from NHS bursaries to student loans for new nursing, midwifery and allied health students from 1 August 2017.

Ben Gummer

The Department will be working with delivery organisations outside of the Department to assess a range of considerations for transition and implementation.

The Department will be consulting on the health education funding reforms in due course.