Tag: Norman Lamb

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-01-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, when he plans to commence the provisions on the imposition of financial penalties on respondent employers who fail to pay an employment tribunal award in section 150 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015.

Nick Boles

We expect to commence the financial penalty provision in section 150 of the Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 from April 2016.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-02-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to improve access to mental health services for care leavers aged 18 to 25 years old.

Alistair Burt

The Government is committed to making the full £1.4 billion investment available over the course of this Parliament to improve mental health services for children and young people.

In line with guidance published by NHS England, all clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) have produced Local Transformation Plans (LTPs) for children and young people’s mental health and these have all now been assured and funding allocated for implementation. These plans required all key partners to agree locally how best to meet the mental health needs of children and young people in their local populations and should cover the whole spectrum of need, which includes improving access to mental health services for vulnerable groups such as children in care and care leavers so that they can receive high quality mental health care when they need it. It is for local partners to decide how much of the funding which will be allocated to CCGs to improve local services throughout the five years will be spent specifically on children in care and other vulnerable groups. However, this will be based on an assessment of local needs and set out in the LTPs.

The Government’s overall strategy to improve outcomes for care leavers is set out in the Care Leaver Strategy: A cross-departmental strategy for young people leaving care report (October 2013), and a one-year-on document, Care Leaver Strategy: One year on progress update, (October 2014) that reported on progress made and set out how the Government intends to further improve support for care leavers. The Government intends to publish its refreshed Care Leaver Strategy later this year.

The Local Government Association has produced a spreadsheet giving details of every LTP can be found using the following webpage address:

www.local.gov.uk/camhs

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-02-11.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, pursuant to the Answer of 9 February 2016 to Question 25396, if she will publish data from the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) on the performance of police forces against the service level agreement standards for the time taken to complete local DBS checks over the last six months.

Karen Bradley

The operational performance plans of police disclosure units are matters for Chief Constables in association with Police and Crime Commissioners.

The DBS regularly publishes detailed datasets showing statistics against internal performance standards which form the basis of its monthly reports to the Home Office. This includes performance against their target to issue 95% of all disclosures within 56 days and the number of disclosure applications in progress each month. This can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dbs-dataset-1-disclosure-progress-information-disclosed-and-update-service-subscriptions.

DBS also publishes datasets showing statistics against service level agreements with police forces. These apply to the performance of police disclosure units and can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dbs-dataset-5-police-disclosure-unit-performance.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-03-14.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the potential effect of the removal of mental health quality premium measures in NHS England’s Quality Premium Guidance 2016-17 on mental health outcomes.

Alistair Burt

The 2016/17 Quality Premium (QP) scheme has been designed to support the delivery of the major priorities for the National Health Service, as set out in the Five Year Forward View and in the NHS Mandate. The QP scheme is reviewed annually, with the intention of having a range of high impact measures addressing a range of priorities across the Five Year Forward View.

However, there is scope for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to focus on mental health, if this is a local priority area in 2016/17. Each CCG is expected to select three local indicators from a menu of suitable measures aligned to the Right Care programme, which sets out a clinically led methodology for improvement and reducing variation in care. This menu includes 17 mental health indicators.

The QP scheme is a part of NHS England’s wider incentive system, including the Commissioning for Quality and Innovation scheme, which includes an incentive focussing on improving the physical health for patients with severe mental illness.

As the QP will be retaining mental health as an indicator there has been no new assessment of the effect of removing.

While there have not yet been any formal meetings with mental health charities about this, following the Mental Health Taskforce report, NHS England are keen to work with stakeholders-including mental health charities- to develop a new and robust mental health indicator for potential inclusion in the 2017/18 QP. This will align with the additional funding to drive improvements in ‘Improved Access to Psychological Therapies’ access from April 2017.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-04-29.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will place in the Library copies of internal communications, meeting notes and memoranda relating to the resignations of the National Guardian and interim deputy National Guardian for whistleblowers.

Ben Gummer

To obtain and collate copies of internal communications, meeting notes and memoranda relating to the resignations of the National Guardian and the interim deputy National Guardian for whistleblowers would incur disproportionate cost.

The National Guardian for whistleblowers, Dame Eileen Sills, left her post on 3 March 2016. She had concluded she did not have the capacity to undertake both the role of the National Guardian and that of Chief Nurse at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust.

The Interim Deputy National Guardian, David Bell, who was seconded to the role, has returned to his substantive post. This was thought to be advisable as until a new appointment to the position of National Guardian is made, it is not clear what level of support will be required from a deputy, or indeed if one is required.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-07-12.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will consider the introduction of a programme to reduce or write off student loans for top graduates entering teaching or social work in areas (a) of high social need and (b) struggling to recruit to such professions.

Nick Gibb

Recruiting sufficient, high-quality teachers is central to the Government’s ambition to deliver educational excellence everywhere. High-quality teachers are the single most important factor determining how well pupils achieve in schools. That is why we have already committed to spend over £1.3 billion on teacher recruitment up to 2020. This includes continuing to provide generous tax-free teacher training bursaries to graduates, which are worth up to £30,000 for academic year 2016/17.

More trainee teachers started training in 2015/16 than in 2014/15, and a record proportion of new trainees held a first class degree. For courses beginning in 2016/17, so far around 26,000 people have secured a teacher training place, and we have already recruited in excess of targets in primary and several secondary subjects.

We review the financial incentives for teacher training every year, and we will continue to test new approaches to recruiting teachers, such as the STEM teacher supply package announced in March 2015.

Recruiting and retaining high quality social workers is essential to ensure we deliver high quality services to vulnerable children and families. As already announced, the Government will consult on the future funding of social work education in order to ensure that there will be an adequate supply of social workers with the right skills and training. This is part of a wider, ongoing programme which has seen investment of over £700m since 2010 in social worker training and improvement programmes, including support for a range of routes to expand entry into the profession such as Frontline, a scheme specifically aimed at bringing top graduates into social work, and Step Up.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2015-11-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure parity between the regulation of nurses and midwives and other regulated health professions.

Ben Gummer

The Law Commissions of England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have completed a review of the regulation of all health and (in England) social care professionals including nurses and midwives and published their report on 2 April 2014. One of the key recommendations made by the Law Commissions was to introduce much greater consistency between the professional regulators as well as simplifying the legislation.

The joint four UK country response to the Law Commissions was published on 29 January 2015 which accepted wholly or in part the vast majority of its recommendations.

The Department is currently reviewing how best to take forward the work of the Law Commissions. We hope to be able to provide an update on this work soon.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-01-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to increase the number of mixed race stem cell donors; what discussions he has had with the Anthony Nolan Trust and others on diversifying stem cell registries; and if he will make a statement.

Jane Ellison

The Department’s delivery partners, NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) and the Anthony Nolan Trust, ensure that all patients regardless of ethnicity can gain maximum benefit from the United Kingdom’s registry of volunteer bone marrow donors and from its inventory of altruistically-donated cord blood.

In March 2015 the Department gave £3 million of funding to NHSBT and the Anthony Nolan Trust to continue their work saving and improving lives through stem cell and cord blood donation. Part of this funding will support the collection of an additional 3,000 Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) adult donors.

The provision of cord blood stem cells remains an important part of the overall strategy and this year will see a continued expansion of the cord blood bank with a target that 40% samples are collected from the BAME community.

The Department continues to support the work of the National BAME Transplant Alliance that helps to coordinate the work of BAME organisations working to promote all forms of donation including bone marrow stem cells.

The Department is currently working with Anthony Nolan and NHSBT to consider possible future funding in the light of the spending review and set against other spending priorities.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-02-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the application-to-place ratio prior to interview is for ST1/CT1 posts starting in August to December 2016 at each specialities national recruitment office.

Ben Gummer

Health Education England (HEE) is responsible for the management of medical specialty recruitment on behalf of the four United Kingdom countries.

The information requested for 2016 is not yet available.

HEE publishes application to place ratios in October on an annual basis. The August to December 2016 data will be published in October 2016.

Competition ratios for 2015 can be found here:

http://specialtytraining.hee.nhs.uk/specialty-recruitment/competition-ratios/2015-competition-ratios/

To note: The data used to determine the competition ratios for is drawn from the initial recruitment round and does not include re-advertisements.

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The below Parliamentary question was asked by Norman Lamb on 2016-02-10.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, (a) how many and (b) what proportion of the doctors applying to Round 1 for Speciality Training posts commencing in the period August to December 2016 applied directly from Foundation Year Two.

Ben Gummer

The information is not currently available. Analysis of training application numbers is carried out by Health Education England (HEE) once recruitment rounds have been completed. HEE will publish the data once this work is complete via the UK Foundation Programme Office (UK FPO) annual reports.

The 2015 annual report is available on the UK FPO Website:

http://www.foundationprogramme.nhs.uk/download.asp?file=FP_Annual_Report_2015_-_FINAL.pdf

The appointments to specialty or general practice are self-declared by the doctors in response to the survey and are not verified against recruitment data.

Whilst the survey is a fairly accurate predictor of the destination of doctors who have completed foundation training the figures are not intended to be an accurate employment record.

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