Tag: Laurence Robertson

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the ease with which nursing homes find sufficient numbers of nurses to employ; and if he will make a statement.

Ben Gummer

In response to concerns about the shortage of nurses in adult social care homes identified in the Care Quality Commission report The state of health care and adult social care in England, 2013/14, the Department held a symposium to discuss the recruitment and retention of registered nurses in the care sector in February 2015.

Following feedback at the symposium, the Department established a Care Sector Nursing Taskforce to take forward actions to help ease the recruitment of nurses in care and nursing homes. This includes improving the image of nursing in the care sector through the development of career pathways for registered nurses, as well as developing new models of care provision, such as training for care assistants to take on enhanced roles, freeing up registered nurses to manage patients with the most complex conditions.

Currently, Health Education England (HEE) is responsible for planning and developing the National Health Service workforce, but has no remit over social care workforce. To solve this situation a Task and Finish Group led by Skills for Care, has been established to scope care sector nursing workforce data. Using data they collect, Skills for Care is able to use mathematical modelling to provide accurate workforce predictions for the care sector. An agreement has been reached that these data will in future be shared with HEE to inform their training commissions. This arrangement will be in place to inform the next commissioning round.

In addition, the announcement made by the Home Secretary on 15 October, that the Tier 2 restrictions will be temporarily changed for nurses so that they can be recruited from outside the European Economic Area (EEA), will enable care sector organisations to recruit nurses from outside the EEA, if they are unable to fill nursing vacancies with United Kingdom nurses.

The newly released Care Quality Commission report The state of health care and adult social care in England, 2014/15, has highlighted that the recruitment and retention of registered nurses into social care remains problematic. We will continue to work with all the relevant stakeholders, to improve staffing issues within the care sector.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-20.

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what steps he is taking to ensure that all Jobcentre Plus premises are fully accessible for people on the autism spectrum, in terms of both environment and staff awareness of autism; and what plans he has to evaluate the progress being made in achieving such accessibility.

Justin Tomlinson

We are committed to supporting all customers so that they are fully able to access our services, and will do this by assessing their individual needs and providing tailored support.

We are continuing to progress the commitments detailed in the Think Autism Strategy and have undertaken a significant amount of work to improve our services for people with Autism/ Hidden Impairments. We are working with Autism Alliance UK to develop greater capacity when supporting people with autism; creating a more appropriate environment and supporting the identification of reasonable adjustment solutions.

The Hidden Impairment Toolkit, which I have sponsored, is available to all DWP staff. This resource helps staff to better understand how to support people with autism and associated hidden impairment conditions. I have attached a copy of this for ease of reference.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, whether addressing barriers to licensing off-patent, repurposed drugs in an aim of the current Accelerated Access Review.

George Freeman

The Accelerated Access Review, chaired by Sir Hugh Taylor, will make recommendations to government on reforms to accelerate access for National Health Service patients to innovative medicines and medical technologies (including devices, diagnostics and digital), making our country the best place in the world to design, develop and deploy these products. This will cover products that may already be on the market and off patent but are being innovatively repurposed to treat conditions other than those in remit of the existing license.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to the Answer of 21 October 2015 to Question 12247, on breast cancer, what assessment his Department has made of the 26 recommendations produced by charities on access to off-patent, repurposed drugs following the roundtable event of February 2015.

George Freeman

The Government hosted a Roundtable Event to explore the issues around off-label prescribing as part of its response to a Private Member’s Bill presented in the last Parliament. The Government’s position on the current Off Patent Drugs Bill and how that relates to issues identified at the Roundtable Event will be shared at the Bill’s second reading on 6 November 2015.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will take steps to monitor the cost to nursing homes of employing agency nurses; and if he will make a statement.

Alistair Burt

The Government has no plans to monitor agency costs to nursing homes.

Care providers are independent businesses and agreements with agency staffing providers are commercial contractual arrangements.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the incidence of bovine TB on farms situated in trial badger cull areas.

George Eustice

On 28 August 2015, the Animal and Plant Health Agency published a report of the incidence of bovine tuberculosis in cattle in 2013-14 in the areas of Somerset and Gloucestershire exposed to the first year of industry-led badger culling. The report is annexed to the Bovine TB Surveillance Report for England 2014, which is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/bovine-tb-surveillance-in-great-britain-2014.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whether the announced reductions in feed-in tariff support will apply to existing contracts or new ones; and if she will make a statement.

Andrea Leadsom

Any changes which we make to the feed-in tariff (FIT) scheme as a result of the FIT review, which is currently open for consultation until 23^rd October, will only apply to new applicants entering the scheme after the necessary legislation to effect the changes has passed through Parliament.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will make it her policy to introduce interim payments in cases in which there are delays in making payments under the Basic Payments Scheme.

George Eustice

The Rural Payments Agency remains on track to meet their public payment commitments. Full payments on the majority of Basic Payment Scheme 2015 claims will be made from December, within the payment window that runs between December and June. As such interim payments are not being considered.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what recent assessment she has made of the level of complexity of the Countryside Stewardship Scheme; if she will take steps to simplify that scheme; and if she will make a statement.

George Eustice

Countryside Stewardship has introduced significant rationalisation with regard to its predecessors; integrating three legacy schemes into one. At the same time the number of environmental management options available has been reduced by 70% and the number of capital items by 20%.

Most of the elements in Countryside Stewardship (higher tier; woodland and water capital grants) remain largely analogous to their predecessor schemes. However, the application process has been inevitably more complex than intended given the need for a paper based application system this year.

The stricter EU control rules have resulted in greater reliance on record keeping and other documentary evidence to demonstrate compliance but we have already published guidance on the controls applicable to the scheme in order to clarify the requirements.

We will evaluate this first year of the scheme and simplify it wherever possible.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Laurence Robertson on 2015-10-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will publish the results of the EU’s recent tests on the likely harmful effects to bees of the use of neonicotinoids; and if she will make a statement.

George Eustice

The EU itself does not carry out tests on the effects on bees from the use of neonicotinoid insecticides.It makes decisions on the regulation of neonicotinoids and other pesticides on the basis of scientific information provided by companies working to agreed standards and published scientific studies.

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has published scientific opinions on the risks from uses of these pesticides following mandates from the European Commission. EFSA also recently held a consultation calling for data on this matter as the first step in an EU review of controls on these insecticides.The UK is contributing fully to this review.

EFSA documents are published on its website (http://www.efsa.europa.eu/).

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