Lord Scriven

The Department does not hold the information requested.

For professions such as dentists, who do NHS commissioned work but who are not directly employed by NHS bodies, the Department does not hold detailed staffing information.

NHS England has commissioned a rapid evidence review of vision based monitoring systems. These insights have been used to work in partnership with people with lived experience, clinicians, and stakeholders to develop national guidance, which will be published imminently. There is currently no guidance to suspend oxevision until such research is carried out.

It is for individual National Health Service employers to decide on their approach to apprenticeships. The Department for Education is currently reviewing access to the Apprenticeship Levy for Level Seven apprenticeships, which Medical Doctor Degree Apprenticeships fall under. The Government is committed to widening participation in medicine and creating a medical workforce that is representative of the society around us.

We will work with partners including NHS England, the Department for Education, and the university sector to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to study medicine, regardless of their background. This summer we will also publish a refreshed workforce plan to provide the health service with much-needed stability and certainty.

The Department has made no such assessment, as the responsibility for spending decisions rests with individual National Health Service trusts.

As public bodies, NHS trusts should maintain the highest standards of rigour, value for money, and propriety in the use of public funding. All spending must contribute to organisational objectives and support the delivery of high-quality patient care.

We are committed to working with the sector to achieve a service that is fit for the future.

As identified by Lord Darzi’s review, primary care is under pressure and in crisis, but there are also demands in other parts of the National Health Service. This has made allocation of available funding very challenging.

As we committed to parliament at the end of last year, we will be resuming our consultation with Community Pharmacy England regarding the funding arrangements for community pharmacy very shortly.

NHS England plays an important role in supporting the National Health Service to run effective influenza and COVID-19 vaccination programmes for NHS staff.

As part of this, NHS England provides a range of resources and tools to support this offer and is working to increase influenza and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in 2024/25. In addition, improved Federated Data Platform reporting is providing more detailed regional uptake intelligence. NHS England is encouraging integrated care boards to work with the highest performing trusts in their region to share best practice and lessons learned, and provide additional support for those providers where uptake is low.

NHS England plays an important role in supporting the National Health Service to run effective influenza and COVID-19 vaccination programmes for NHS staff.

As part of this, NHS England provides a range of resources and tools to support this offer and is working to increase influenza and COVID-19 vaccination uptake in 2024/25. In addition, improved Federated Data Platform reporting is providing more detailed regional uptake intelligence. NHS England is encouraging integrated care boards to work with the highest performing trusts in their region to share best practice and lessons learned, and provide additional support for those providers where uptake is low.

The Building the Right Support Action Plan, published in 2022, contains commitments which have not yet passed their delivery dates, including the commitment to reform the Mental Health Act.

We do not plan to create new actions in a new action plan while the bill is before Parliament. However, we recognise that this is a vitally important area, and we are considering how to ensure that more people with a learning disability and autistic people are supported well in the community, ahead of the commencement of the Mental Health Act reforms.

In September 2023, the Department funded National Institute for Health and Care Research launched a two-stage open competition to fund 13 new Health Protection Research Units (HPRUs). Each HPRU is a collaborative research partnership between the UK Health Security Agency and a university or group of universities. Overall, the HPRUs have been awarded £77 million of funding over five years for research to protect the public from health threats.

The following table sets out the applications received by region, and where the university is either the lead applicant or a collaborating partner on the HPRU application:

The following table shows the amount of adult acute mental health out of area placements in each of the last three years:

Source: Out of Area Placements in Mental Health Services, NHS England.

Note: Information about OAP placements in other mental health services, such as specialist mental health inpatient services or services for children and young people, is not available. The information provided is for financial years and goes up to March 2024 before the new data collection begins.

This information is not held in the format requested, as data on active out of area placements is not categorised by age.

There have been no cuts to operational services to make the £2.3 billion of funding available. The majority came from central NHS England funding, held as part of the start year financial plans for this purpose. The remainder came from savings identified during the subsequent planning round, including taking a higher risk appetite on the extent to which underspends or savings would be identified during the course of the year. No funding came from savings on allocated capital budgets.

The Government considered the cost pressures facing adult social care as part of the wider consideration of local government spending within the Spending Review process. This assessment took into account a wide range of factors, including changes to employer National Insurance contributions, and the National Living Wage increases.

In response to the range of pressures facing local authorities, the Government is providing a real-terms uplift to core local government spending power of approximately 3.2%, which includes £1.3 billion of new grant funding in 2025/26.

As part of the Government's commitment to returning to the 18-week constitutional standard from Referral to Treatment, work is underway and planned throughout 2025/26 to reform patient care pathways to ensure patients are seen in the settings which deliver better patient experience for lower cost.

This pathway reform will look at end-to-end pathways across primary, community and secondary care, and include diagnostics. NHS England is initially prioritising pathways in cardiology, respiratory, ear-nose-throat, gastroenterology and urology due to challenging demand, and is looking at opportunities to improve efficiency across other pathways, including through the use of diagnostic first pathways, integration across settings workforce development. There are ongoing reform efforts underway to address challenges identified in other specialities too. For example, in gynaecology, women’s health hubs are bringing together healthcare professionals and existing services to provide integrated women’s health services in the community to improve health outcomes for women, whilst reducing healthcare inequalities.

NHS England is leading national efforts to support pathway re-design, to take the best of clinically led innovation and practice across the country. Progress will be monitored and reported via the Oversight and Assessment Framework through which trusts report to integrated care boards; these are in turn shared with NHS England regional teams and filter into national reporting.

The following table shows the detentions under the Mental Health Act 1983, by legal status and across all providers, each year from 2021/22 to 2023/24:

Source: the Emergency Care Data Set and the Mental Health Data Set.

We have taken necessary decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at Autumn Budget. This enabled the Spending Review settlement of a £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department from 2023/24 outturn to 2025/26. The employer national insurance rise will be implemented in April 2025, with the Department setting out further details on allocation of funding for next year in due course.

As advised by HM Treasury's 2024 Autumn Budget, the health and social care budget will grow by £12.5 billion in 2024/25 and by £22.6 billion in 2025/26, compared to 2023/24. £7.6 billion of the 2024/25 growth was confirmed in 2024/25 Main Estimates in July 2024. This is the first time a budget for 2025/26 has been agreed with HM Treasury.

The Government considered the cost pressures facing adult social care as part of the wider consideration of local government spending within the Spending Review process.

In response to these pressures, the Government is providing at least £600 million of new grant funding for social care in 2025/26, as part of the broader estimated real-terms uplift to core local government spending power of approximately 3.2%. We will continue to work with the adult social care sector to understand the pressures on adult social care delivery and local authority budgets.

The government is uplifting resident doctor pay scales for 2023-24 by an average of 4.05% on top of their existing pay award. This has an estimated cost impact of approximately £350 million per year.

On the second question, we have taken tough decisions to fix the foundations in the public finances at Autumn Budget, this enabled the SR settlement of £22.6 billion increase in resource spending for the Department of Health and Social Care from 2023-24 outturn to 2025-26. The Employer National Insurance rise will be implemented April 2025, the Department of Health and Social Care will set out further details on allocation of funding for next year in due course, including through NHS Planning Guidance and the usual consultations.

The additional funding announced in the Budget will support the National Health Service in England to deliver an additional 40,000 elective appointments a week, and will make progress towards the commitment that patients should expect to wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment. Performance expectations of NHS integrated care boards (ICBs) and trusts for the next financial year will be set out in the 2025/26 NHS planning guidance, at the earliest opportunity.

Investment alone won’t be enough to tackle the problems facing the NHS, and it must go hand in hand with fundamental reform. In the short term, patient care pathways will be reformed to ensure that patients are seen in settings which can deliver better patient experience for lower cost, enhancing patient choice and embedding best practice across the country. Looking to the future, we will publish a 10-Year Health Plan for the NHS in the spring which will set out a bold agenda to deliver on the three big shifts needed to move healthcare from hospitals to the community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention.

Tackling waiting lists is a key part of our Health Mission, and we will deliver an additional 2 million operations, scans, and appointments during our first year in Government, which is equivalent to 40,000 per week, as a first step in our commitment to ensuring that patients can expect to be treated within 18 weeks. Further details regarding the additional appointments will be confirmed at the earliest opportunity.

31 out of the 42 integrated care boards agreed a deficit plan for the year for their overall systems with NHS England, which aggregated to a total planned overspend of £2.3 billion. NHS England has since provided additional funding to systems to match those plans, meaning there are currently no projected system-wide deficits based on those start year plans.

The data leaked following the cyber-attack on Synnovis is still being investigated by Synnovis. This involves interrogation to identify the personal data that has been affected. The complexity of the investigation means it will take time for Synnovis to clarify and identify which individuals and organisations have been impacted and the nature of the data.

We understand that the data leaked in the Synnovis cyber-attack was not taken from a single database but was a partial copy of content from Synnovis’s administrative working drives.

When any databases which contain personal data are established by an organisation, the organisation has its own legal responsibilities as a controller of the data to ensure data protection by design and default in the design and development of a database, and to carry out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) under UK General Data Protection Regulation. A DPIA includes an assessment of any risks to individuals, and how these risks are mitigated.

The data leaked following the cyber-attack on Synnovis is still being investigated by Synnovis. This involves interrogation to identify the personal data that has been affected. The complexity of the investigation means it will take time for Synnovis to clarify and identify which individuals and organisations have been impacted and the nature of the data.

We understand that the data leaked in the Synnovis cyber-attack was not taken from a single database but was a partial copy of content from Synnovis’s administrative working drives.

When any databases which contain personal data are established by an organisation, the organisation has its own legal responsibilities as a controller of the data to ensure data protection by design and default in the design and development of a database, and to carry out a data protection impact assessment (DPIA) under UK General Data Protection Regulation. A DPIA includes an assessment of any risks to individuals, and how these risks are mitigated.

Pharmacies play a vital role in our healthcare system. We are committed to embedding Pharmacy First and building on it, expanding the role of pharmacies and to better utilising the skills of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians. That includes making prescribing part of the services delivered by community pharmacists.

We continue to discuss the use of the death penalty with the Bahrain authorities and have not made representations recently on the cases mentioned. We are aware that investigations are ongoing into allegations of mistreatment.

Pakistan is a FCDO human rights priority country. We work to protect and promote human rights in Pakistan through our diplomatic engagement and programme funding. This includes regularly raising our opposition to the death penalty and concerns about the misuse of blasphemy laws, both in principle and in relation to specific cases. Minister Falconer, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan, underlined the importance of promoting religious tolerance and harmony with Pakistan's Human Rights Minister Azam Tarar on 4 September.

The FCDO is committed to Transparency. We are currently reviewing the transparency of the Gulf Strategy Fund, to build on the Thematic Summaries already published annually on GOV.UK. Publication of the summary for 2023/24 will follow this review.