Tag: Royston Smith

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-04.

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what proportion of his Department’s 2015-16 budget is allocated to (a) creating and (b) accessing new markets for trade and growth.

Anna Soubry

Increasing trade and growth through exports, to all overseas markets, is a key factor in the Government’s long-term economic plan. Government departments are working together to support UK businesses looking to take advantage of overseas opportunities and to create a strong business environment that allows them to flourish both at home and overseas. A key part of this work is to identify export opportunities, many of which are based around the needs of new high-growth and emerging markets.

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is at the heart of this work and the budget allocation for this activity will be set out in the UKTI Annual Report and Accounts 2015/16.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to ensure that seven day NHS provision will be accessible in all parts of the country.

Ben Gummer

The Government has committed that by 2020 patients with urgent and emergency care hospital needs will have access to the same high quality hospital care at the weekend as they do during the week. This means that these patients will have access to the same level of consultant review, diagnostic tests and treatments seven days a week. Hospitals will deliver this seven day provision for 25% of the population by March 2017, 50% by March 2018 and the rest of England by 2020.

The Government has also committed that by 2020 everyone will be able to access routine general practitioner appointments at evenings and weekends. NHS 111 will give patients easy, 24/7 access to integrated urgent care services, offering clinical assessment, advice and treatment. A range of professionals will be directly available to speak to callers who need it.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-21.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to ensure that schools take steps to promote the mental well-being of primary school students when they undertake Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 examinations.

Mr Sam Gyimah

Good mental health and wellbeing is a key priority for this Government. We have high aspirations for all children and want them to be able to fulfil their potential. Schools should consider how to provide appropriate support to their pupils, based on their individual circumstances, as part of a ‘whole-school’ approach.

We have provided schools with a range of resources to support them in promoting mental wellbeing. We have funded guidance and age-appropriate lesson plans on teaching mental health in PSHE. At KS1 and 2 the lesson plans include teaching children how to describe emotions, talk about anxiety and worries, and develop coping strategies. Teachers and other staff can access MindEd, a free online portal which provides information about specific mental health problems and how to support them.

Other resources include guidance on mental health and behaviour and the provision of counselling in schools.

However, we recognise that teachers are not mental health professionals which is why we are contributing £1.5m to a joint pilot between schools and specialist mental health services, to ensure pupils have timely access to appropriate specialist support where needed.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department plans to take after the new terms and conditions for doctors come into effect to encourage people to take up a career in medicine.

Ben Gummer

Medicine is an extremely popular career choice and we expect that to continue. In 2015, there were over 48,000 applications for pre-clinical medicine course of which over 5,000 people were accepted onto a place on this course.

The new contract for doctors in training will have a positive impact on the working life of doctors and on the training they receive. It will introduce stronger safeguards to ensure doctors are not required to work long, unsafe hours, enforced through contractual obligations on employers and external scrutiny of those hours by the Care Quality Commission and the independent Guardian of safe working hours.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-03-23.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of the year 7 catch-up premium in raising pupil attainment at GCSE level.

Mr Sam Gyimah

Since 2012 we have provided £500 per pupil funding to secondary schools for year 7 pupils who did not meet the expected standard in reading or mathematics at primary school. This funding enables schools to deliver additional support, such as individual tuition or intensive support in small groups, for those pupils that most need it.

It is not possible to make an assessment of the effectiveness of the year 7 catch-up premium in raising pupil attainment at GCSE level, as the first cohort of pupils to benefit from this funding in 2012 will now be in year 10 and have not yet entered GCSEs.

We provide advice and guidance to schools on how they should use their funding and have published guidance on literacy and numeracy catch-up strategies which schools can consult when making decisions on how to spend their funding. Schools must publish details of how they spend their year 7 catch-up premium funding on the school website.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-04-13.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has for the National Curriculum when all schools become academies.

Nick Gibb

In 2014 the Government introduced a new, more rigorous national curriculum which was developed with regard to the views of subject experts and teachers and to the findings of international best practice comparisons.

A system where every school is an academy will mean that the national curriculum will be a benchmark. It will serve an important role in setting out the level of knowledge-based, academically rigorous education which every child should experience.

If academies or Multi-Academy Trusts (MATs) want to deliver the national curriculum in their schools, they can do so confidently. The Government wants academies to use their freedoms to innovate and build challenging, tailored curricula to meet the particular needs of their pupils, their local area or the particular ethos of the school.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-04-19.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average level of funding for GPs in (a) Southampton City Clinical Commissioning Group, (b) comparator clinical commissioning groups and (c) England was in each of the last 3 years.

Alistair Burt

Data from the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that the funding for general practitioners (GPs) in Southampton City Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) was £31,892,320 in 2013/14 and £33,578,245 in 2014/15.

The comparator CCGs fall into the area of Wessex. The average level of funding for GPs in comparator CCGs was £40,243,811 in 2013/14 and £43,300,640 in 2014/15.

The average level of funding for GPs in England was £36,169,099 in 2013/14 and £37,868,835 in 2014/15.

Data is not available for earlier years.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-06-06.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what the average proportion of GP’s working time spent outside of the surgery is.

Alistair Burt

The information is not held centrally. As general practitioners (GPs) are independent contractors, it is for each practice to determine how they run their practice in order to meet the reasonable needs of their patients.

The Department commissions a GP Worklife Survey and this is carried out by the Manchester Centre for Health Economics at the University of Manchester on behalf of the Policy Research Unit in Commissioning and the Healthcare System (PRUComm).

In 2015, respondents were asked to indicate how much of their time was spent on external meetings, for example, meetings of the clinical commissioning group. Responses show that GPs spend 8.4% of their time on administration, 3.5% on external meetings and 6.3% on other activities.

The full report can be found at:

http://www.population-health.manchester.ac.uk/healtheconomics/research/Reports/EighthNationalGPWorklifeSurveyreport/EighthNationalGPWorklifeSurveyreport.pdf

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-06-13.

To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office, what the life expectancy is of residents of the (a) Southampton City, (b) NHS West London, (c) NHS North Manchester and (d) West Hampshire clinical commissioning group areas.

Mr Rob Wilson

The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the Authority to reply.

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Royston Smith on 2016-07-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the effect of local sustainability and transformation plans on geographical variations in stroke care.

George Freeman

Health economies have come together to develop Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) for their footprints until 2020/21. As with the current arrangements for planning and delivery, there are layers of plans which can sit below STPs, with shared links and dependencies. STPs do not replace the existing system architecture or provide details on all individual clinical areas. Rather STPs act as an umbrella, holding underneath them a number of different specific plans to address key local issues. As such, for conditions such as Stroke, it is not expected that STPs will provide great levels of detail regarding all the Stroke related activity occurring across the Footprint.

Visibility will be provided through other mechanisms such as audits. Stroke data is collected by the national audit from all trusts and reported at both trust and clinical commissioning group (CCG) level. The Royal College of Physicians which runs the audit has not done an analysis to compare services between rural and urban CCGs. However the data is available in the public domain for researchers should they wish to do so.