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Mr. Scott : I refer the hon. Member to my reply to the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) on 13 February at column 63. No existing beneficiaries will reach age 75 before 29 November.
HEALTH
NHS Costs
Mr. Cohen : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will indicate in cash terms for the current year the cost of the teaching hospitals based in London and other national resources for the National Health Service based in London.
Mr. Mellor : We do not collect information in the form requested. But London is a centre for a wide range of services a number of which are of national importance. Costing returns submitted to the Department by district and special health authorities in London for major hospitals in teaching districts and postgraduate teaching
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hospitals respectively show that total revenue expenditure attributable to those hospitals amounted to some £656 million in 1986-87.For further information on the expenditure and statistics relevant to individual London teaching hospitals I refer the hon. Member to the Department's annual publication "Health Services Costing Returns" (the latest being for 1986-87), copies of which are in the Library.
AIDS
Mr. Vaz : To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what assessment his Department is conducting of early intervention strategies for AIDS and HIV infection in the United States of America ;
(2) what proposals there are for assessment of early intervention strategies with the aim of restraining, slowing down or stopping the development of AIDS in people who are HIV anti-body positive including (a) complementary/alternative medicine, (b) therapies, (c) diet and (d) psychological approaches.
Mr. Mellor : The Medical Research Council is the main Government agency for biomedical research. It is conducting a clinical trial of zidovudine in early HIV infection, but no other early intervention is seen to be ready for evaluation by clinical trial. The MRC keeps abreast of results of clinical trials in HIV infection both from the United States of America and elsewhere.
Doctors and Dentists
Mr. Holt : To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) doctors and (b) dentists born and trained in the Republic of Ireland have taken up National Health Service posts in the United Kingdom in each of the past 10 years.
Mr. Mellor : The information requested is not immediately available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Phlebotomists and Venepuncturists
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he has any plans to equalise the scale of wages paid by health authorities to phlebotomists and venepuncturists.
Mr. Mellor : The pay of phlebotomists and venepuncturists is a matter for negotiation in the appropriate Whitley council.
Eye Tests
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what directives he intends issuing to general practitioners to ensure effective plans are made to inform relatives of patients suffering from diabetes and glaucoma that eye tests will be free provided that general practitioners provide confirmatory certification.
Mr. Freeman : From 1 April 1989 close relatives aged 40 and over of patients with glaucoma will be eligible for an NHS sight test. A leaflet describing the importance of regular eye checks for this group, their eligibility for an NHS sight test and the method of making a claim will be sent to general practitioners and health authorities for display in waiting rooms and out-patient departments. It is also intended to write to hospital doctors asking them to
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supply copies for patients with diagnosed glaucoma to pass to their relatives. Regular eye-testing for diabetic retinopathy is appropriate only for people already known to have diabetes and they are eligible for NHS sight tests.MMR Immunisation
Mr. Gareth Wardell : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will publish in the Official Report any preliminary figures available for the uptake of MMR immunisation in each health authority in England during the first three months of the MMR being available.
Mr. Freeman : Immunisation uptake figures are reported and recorded on an annual (financial year) basis. Rates for health authorities in general, following the introduction of MMR vaccine, will not, therefore, be available for some time. Reports from a sample of districts who have co- operated with the communicable disease surveillance centre are being analysed and the results will be made public as soon as possible. However, the distribution of doses of the vaccine from 1 October to the end of January (1.2 million against a maximum requirement from the two priority groups of children of 400, 000) indicates a very high uptake level and a likely acceleration of the "catch up" period for other children.
Equal Opportunities
Mr. Janner : To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many and what percentage of officers in each grade and overall in his Department are (a) women and (b) from ethnic minorities, respectively.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke : We do not have information in the form requested because records are held on a combined basis with the Department of Social Security. Information for both Departments as at 23 February is given by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Security in his reply to the hon. and learned Member today.
Fullerton Hospital, Doncaster
Mr. Redmond : To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether the proposed sale of Fullerton hospital for old people at Denaby, Doncaster, will be taken into account in the local health authority's general manager and senior manager's performance-related pay scheme.
Mr. Mellor : The assessment for performance-related pay will take account of all the objectives which have been set for the manager concerned. We do not hold centrally information about the objectives set for individual managers. For this purpose property sales or planned hospital closures would normally be set in the context of wider objectives such as improving the use of an authority's resources or developing new patterns of service and the assessment would reflect the achievement of these wider objectives.
Nursing Homes
Mr. Pendry : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will provide details of placements of elderly persons in (a) private residential homes per county in England and (b) private nursing homes in England.
Mr. Mellor : Provisional information on the number of elderly people supported by local authorities in private
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residential accommodation for elderly and younger physically handicapped people as at 31 March 1987 is given in the table. The numbers of elderly people receiving treatment in private nursing homes under contractual arrangements is given in "Patients Receiving Treatment Under Contractual Arrangements with Institutions Outside the NHS in England, National and Regional Summaries" (form SH9). The latest available data relates to 31 December 1986. A copy is available in the Library.
|c|Number of residents aged 65 and over supported by local authorities|c|
|c|in private homes for elderly people and younger physically|c|
|c|handicapped people, as at 31 March 1987 (provisional).|c|
Local Authority |Supported residents aged
|65 and over in private
|homes
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cleveland |4
Cumbria |1
Durham |0
Northumberland |0
Gateshead |0
Newcastle upon Tyne |2
North Tyneside |1
South Tyneside |0
Sunderland |4
Humberside |0
North Yorkshire |1
Barnsley |0
Doncaster |0
Rotherham |0
Sheffield |0
Bradford |4
Calderdale |0
Kirklees |15
Leeds |0
Wakefield |0
Cheshire |0
Lancashire |1
Bolton |0
Bury |0
Manchester |0
Oldham |2
Rochdale |6
Salford |0
Stockport |0
Tameside |0
Trafford |0
Wigan |0
Knowsley |5
Liverpool |4
Sefton |19
St. Helens |0
Wirral |1
Hereford & Worcester |1
Shropshire |0
Staffordshire |0
Warwickshire |4
Birmingham |8
Coventry |0
Dudley |0
Sandwell |1
Solihull |0
Walsall |2
Wolverhampton |7
Derbyshire |0
Leicestershire |4
Lincolnshire |4
Northamptonshire |0
Nottinghamshire |0
Bedfordshire |0
Berkshire |6
Buckinghamshire |10
Cambridgeshire |1
Essex |0
Hertfordshire |0
Norfolk |10
Oxfordshire |6
Suffolk |3
Camden |27
Greenwich |0
Hackney |34
Hammersmith |3
Islington |23
Kensington |6
Lambeth |0
Lewisham |22
Southwark |16
Tower Hamlets |34
Wandsworth |27
Westminster |15
City of London |6
Barking |0
Barnet |24
Bexley |0
Brent |9
Bromley |1
Croydon |0
Ealing |39
Enfield |1
Haringey |20
Harrow |0
Havering |1
Hillingdon |4
Hounslow |0
Kingston upon Thames |30
Merton |12
Newham |0
Redbridge |1
Richmond upon Thames |0
Sutton |1
Waltham Forest |21
Dorset |0
Hampshire |22
Isle of Wight |0
Kent |0
Surrey |1
East Sussex |0
West Sussex |16
Wiltshire |5
Avon |0
Cornwall |0
Devon |0
Gloucestershire |0
Isles of Scilly |0
Somerset |0
|-------
England |558
Health Statistics (Norwich)
Mr. John Garrett : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the incidence of (a) leukaemia, (b) cot deaths and (c) birth abnormalities in the Norwich area ; and what are the national averages.
Mr. Freeman [holding answer 20 February 1989] : Numbers and rates for (a) notifications of newly diagnosed cases of leukaemia, (b) deaths with leukaemia as underlying cause, (c) cot deaths and (d) birth abnormalities for Norwich district health authority and England and Wales in 1987, except registrations of leukaemia for which 1984 is the latest available data.
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Norwich DHA England and Wales
|Numbers |Rate |Numbers |Rate
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Registrations of leukaemia 1984<1> |46 |<2>10.11|4,307 |<2>8.65
Deaths from leukaemia 1987<1> |45 |<2>9.60 |3,650 |<2>7.26
Cot deaths<4> |6 |<3>1.11 |1,528 |<3>2.23
Number of malformed babies<5> |74 |<3>13.71|13,581 |<3>19.83
<1> Leukaemia assigned to an International Classification of Diseases (ICD) 9th
revision code 204-208.
<2> Rate per 100,000 population.
<3> Rate per 1,000 total births.
<4> Any mention of cot death or similar term on death certificate whether
underlying cause or not. Under 1 year of age only.
<5> Information is derived from a voluntary system of notifications at birth or
up to 7 days afterwards. It is likely to be an incomplete measure of the total
number of babies affected.
Electromagnetic Radiation
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what studies his Department has undertaken to determine the effects of electromagnetic radiation at extremely low frequencies on human health.
Mr. Freeman : The Department does not itself undertake research into possible hazards to health from radiation. However, the National Radiological Protection Board is under a statutory duty to inform and advise Government, and others, in relation to any such hazards. I understand that the electricity supply industry is currently funding a research programme to investigate any late effects on health from electromagnetic fields. Other research into the subject is continuing, both nationally and internationally, and we shall monitor the results closely.
Trent Regional Health Authority
Mr. Redmond : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will list by district health authority within the Trent regional health authority, how much National Health Service land has been sold in 1987-88 prices for each year since 1979
Mr. Freeman : A list of all land and property sold by the Trent RHA was given in my hon. and learned Friend's reply to the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) on 22 December 1988 at columns 401-4. To arrive at 1987-88 prices the figures should be divided by the following gross domestic product (market prices) deflators : 1979-80--0.56955
1980-81--0.67460
1981-82--0.74104
1982-83--0.79398
1983-84--0.83014
1984-85--0.87214
1985-86--0.91922
1986-87--0.94988
These deflators however take no account of the volatility of the property market.
Mr. Redmond : To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much undeveloped National Health Service land is owned by the Trent regional health authority ; and who benefits from the sale of such land.
Mr. Freeman : Information on the amount of NHS land which is undeveloped is not held. However at 31 March 1988 the total land holding of Trent RHA amounted to approximately 4,324 acres, of which just over 800 acres had been declared surplus to requirements and was in the process of disposal. All proceeds from the sale of surplus NHS land are retained by health authorities for reinvestment in the service.
Mr. Blunkett : To ask the Secretary of State for Health, pursuant to his answer of 9 February concerning the
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resource allocation working party, Official Report, column 803 , what is his best estimate of the likely impact on resources available to the Trent region, of the trends he describes.Mr. Kenneth Clarke : The question is a rephrasing of the hon. Member's original question and there is nothing that I can sensibly add to my original answer.
Ambulance Service (London)
Mr. Spearing : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what number of out-patient appointments were cancelled at (a) the Newham general and (b) St. Andrews hospital, Bow, in each of the weeks in January and at first two in February consequent on no ambulance being available ; and if he will list comparable figures for each of the divisions of the London ambulance service over the same period, together with respective totals.
Mr. Freeman : Out-patient appointments cancelled at Newham general and St. Andrews hospital, Bow, because no ambulance was available, were as follows :
Week ending |Newham general |St, Andrews, Bow -------------------------------------------------------------------- January 7 |13 |35 January 14 |24 |18 January 21 |0 |3 January 28 |5 |0 February 4 |1 |4 February 11 |8 |7
Out-patient appointments cancelled in each division of the London ambulance service because no ambulance was available were as follows :
T Week ending |North East |North West |South East |South West |Total ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 7 |140 |43 |9 |0 |192 January 14 |157 |53 |22 |2 |234 January 21 |69 |62 |14 |3 |148 January 28 |132 |60 |56 |0 |248 February 4 |125 |34 |21 |0 |180 February 11 |87 |56 |9 |8 |160 Note: The North East division is the largest and carries the highest number of patients.
Mr. Spearing : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if, pursuant to his reply to the hon. Member for Newham, South of 23 February concerning expenditure of the London ambulance service he will itemise the expenditure of £23,967,237 on emergency ambulance service and £7,977,645 on non-emergency services, respectively, in the year 1987- 88 ; and what are the recent sums budgeted for in the year 1988-89.
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Mr. Freeman : A breakdown of the figures requested could be produced only at disproportionate cost. The figures for the emergency and non- emergency services for 1988-89 will be available when the South West Thames regional health authority produces its final accounts later this year.
Mr. Spearing : To ask the Secretary of State for Health in what publication the annual expenditure and income of the London ambulance service has been made available to the public ; when he expects its budget for the financial years 1989-90 to be agreed ; and with what body or bodies he consulted prior to its determination.
Mr. Freeman : The budget for the London ambulance service is determined by the South West Thames regional health authority, not by my right hon. and learned Friend. The information requested is published in the authority's annual accounts. It is also included in the Department's publication "Health Services Costing Returns" (latest edition 1986-87) copies of which are in the Library. The 1989-90 budget for the LAS is currently the subject of discussion with the other three Thames regions, and district health authorities, community health authorities and family practitioners committees will be consulted before the budget is approved by South West Thames regional health authority.
Mr. Spearing : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what is the estimated or actual proportion of emergency calls to the headquarters of the London ambulance service which were initially referred to a recorded message service during the first and second weeks of February, respectively, together with the highest proportion during a specific day and hour during that fortnight.
Mr. Freeman : This information is not collected routinely in the form requested and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
Mid-Essex Health Authority
Mr. Burns : To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much has been spent on hospital building and upgrading of existing facilities in the Mid-Essex health authority since 1979.
Mr. Freeman : This information is not held centrally. My hon. Friend may wish to approach the chairman of Mid-Essex health authority for the information he seeks.
Mr. Burns : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what was the number of (a) in-patients and (b) out-patients treated by the National Health Service in the Mid-Essex health authority area in 1979 and the latest available year, respectively.
Mr. Freeman : The information requested is given in the table :
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|c|Mid-Essex health authority|c|
|1979 |1987-88
----------------------------------------------------------------
In-patient cases treated |20,971 |30,218
Total out-patient attendances, of which |119,443|147,698
new out-patient cases |34,853 |39,354
Mr. Burns : To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) how many hip replacement operations were carried out in the Mid-Essex health authority area in 1979 and the latest available year, respectively ; (2) how many cataract operations were carried out in the Mid-Essex health authority area in 1979 and the latest available year, respectively.
Mr. Freeman : This information is not held centrally. My hon. Friend may wish to approach the chairman of Mid-Essex health authority for the information he seeks.
Humana Hospital (Inquiry)
Mr. Dobson : To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) whether the Bloomsbury health authority inquiry has yet revealed who billed recipients of kidneys received at the Wellington Humana hospital ; (2) whether the computerised billing records of the Wellington Humana hospital have been made available to the Bloomsbury health authority inquiry.
Mr. Freeman : The allegations have been carefully examined. None of the inquiries, including an examination of the hospital's computerised billing, have revealed evidence of the sale or purchase of human kidneys for transplantation. As is normal practice, the bills were sent to the admitting clinician.
Salmonella
Mr. Ashley : To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will place in the Library copies of all papers prepared by his Department or by the public health laboratory service for the working group on salmonella and eggs.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke [holding answer 20 February 1989] : The public health laboratory service represented my Department on this group. I am informed that all its documents were working documents. As such, none were intended for, nor were they in a form suitable for, separate publication.
Dr. David Clark : To ask the Secretary of State for Health what evidence he has of salmonella enteriditis being found in imported eggs.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke [holding answer 20 February 1989] : I have no evidence that salmonella enteriditis has been found in imported eggs.
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