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28 Jan 2003 : Column 798W—continued

Statutory Instruments

Mr. Bercow: To ask the Parliamentary Secretary, Lord Chancellor's Department, how many statutory instruments have been issued by her Department in each calendar year since 1979. [89845]

Ms Rosie Winterton: The figures in the following table show the number of Statutory Instruments, Orders in Council and Northern Ireland Statutory Rules issued by the Lord Chancellor's Department from 1998 to 2002.

Figures for previous years are unavailable.

	1998	1999	2000	2001	2002
Statutory Instrument	57	106	110	137	64
Order in Council	2	4	2	10	14
Northern Ireland Statutory Rule	26	16	21	15	26
Total	35	126	133	162	104

HEALTH

Acute Hospital Services

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research his Department has conducted into the reasons for different categories of acute hospital staff choosing to leave their professions. [91476]

Mr. Hutton: The Department has commissioned over many years and continues to fund a series of cohort studies of doctors' careers by the United Kingdom medical careers research group at the University of Oxford.

This research covers all doctors, not just those employed in acute hospitals. The objectives are:

to determine the career choices of UK doctors at regular intervals after qualification and to study the factors that influence them;


to study career progression at regular intervals, to compare it with earlier career choices and to determine factors that have influenced any change;


to study and estimate the movement of doctors to work outside the national health service, to work in medicine outside the UK, or to leave medicine, and to identify factors associated with them;


to ascertain the views of doctors about their work, training, career, working environment, and morale, and to compare these between specialties, grades, etc.;


to use study findings to model and forecast future workforce supply;


to consider the findings, to make recommendations about their interpretation and policy relevance, and to inform medical workforce planners and decision-makers about factors that have an important influence on medical careers and medical work.

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These studies, which are questionnaire surveys of all UK medical graduates, have been published most recently in the British Medical Journal on 28 September 2002.

The Department also funds the nursing research unit at King's College London to do similar work on nurses' careers.

Aids and Adaptations

Lynne Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he intends to publish his consultation document on the provision of aids and adaptations; and whether the document will include an assessment of the adequacy of staffing and financial resources in the provision of adaptations for elderly and disabled people. [92606]

Mr. McNulty : I have been asked to reply.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, jointly with the Department of Health, will very shortly be publishing guidance on delivering an effective housing adaptations service. This guidance deals primarily with how such a service should be organised by the relevant housing and social service departments of local authorities and is based on detailed field research about existing best practice. In relation to the adequacy of resources available for this programme the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister will shortly publish a long-term programme of action to deliver sustainable communities in all regions. This will set out the allocation of spending review resources on housing and planning including the funding available for Disabled Facilities Grants over the next three years.

Ambulance Equipment (Chemical Incidents)

Dr. Fox: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) NHS acute trusts and (b) NHS ambulance trusts received a letter dated 22 October from the chief scientist because they had yet to order mobile decontamination units and personal protective equipment for chemical incidents. [84036]

Mr. Hutton: The Department of Health chief scientist wrote to the national health service on 22 October to remind all NHS trust chief executives of current policy on this issue.

Biological Warfare

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Health which organisation will be responsible for the (a) assessment of and (b) response to the health dimension of the threats of biological warfare. [86030]

Mr. Hutton: Assessment of the threats of biological warfare is undertaken in the context of the overall monitoring and assessment of potential terrorist threats to the United Kingdom done by the security and intelligence agencies, the police, scientific and other specialist advisors including the scientific resources of DSTL Porton Down. The Home Office is the lead Department for terrorist threats or incidents.

The Department of Health is the lead Department for dealing with infectious diseases in England. It is assisted in this role by the Public Health Laboratory Service.

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Assessment of the health dimensions and the operational responses needed to deal with the threat of biological warfare is undertaken by the Department of Health in concert with other Government Departments and agencies involved in the wider threat assessments.

Body Piercing

Ms Munn: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research his Department has considered on the risks of body piercing to people with congenital heart disease. [92519]

Ms Blears: We are not aware of any research into the risks of body piercing for individuals with congenital heart disease, although there have been a small number of published case reports from abroad of endocarditis in individuals with congenital heart disease following skin piercing.

There has been a small study in the United States, which investigated ear piercing and tattooing in patients with congenital heart disease ¹ . In this study, no patients experienced serious infections following ear-piercing or tattooing, although about a quarter of patients experienced minor local skin infections following ear piercing.

¹ Cetta F., Graham L. C., Lichtenberg R. C., Warnes C. A. Piercing and tattooing in patients with congenital heart disease: patient and physician perspectives. Journal of Adolescent Health 1999: 24: 160–162.

Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust

Mr. Lidington: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what plans he has to ensure a smooth handover from the boards and management of the Stoke Mandeville Hospital NHS Trust and the South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust to the new Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust from 1 April; [92806]

(2) when he will announce the names of (a) the Chief Executive designate and (b) the Directors-designate of the Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust. [92807]

Ms Blears [holding answers 23 January 2003]: A comprehensive project plan for the development of the new Buckinghamshire Hospitals National Health Service Trust and for the transfer of the functions and responsibilities of the Stoke Mandeville Hospital NHS Trust and South Buckinghamshire NHS Trust has been in place for some time.

The plan covers, among many other things, the appointment of the chair and chief executive, the transfer arrangements for staff and legal aspects of property and finance.

Interviews will take place shortly for the post of chief executive and an announcement will be made as soon as possible. The appointment of executive directors will follow this.

Cancelled Operations

Dr. Evan Harris: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many patients whose operation was cancelled on the day of surgery did not receive a new binding date for an operation within 28 days in each

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quarter of the last year; and what arrangements were put in place to provide these patients with treatment at a time and hospital of their choosing. [85302]

Mr. Hutton: The NHS Plan cancelled operations guarantee came into force on 1 April 2002. Under the NHS Plan, if a patient's operation is cancelled by the hospital on the day of surgery for non-clinical reasons, the hospital will have to offer another binding date within a maximum of the next 28 days or fund the patient's treatment at the time and hospital of the patient's choice.

Data on the number of operations cancelled on the day of surgery and on the number of patients who were still waiting for treatment after 28 days of their original cancelled operation date were collected from Quarter 1, 2002–03. The latest available for Quarter 2, 2002–03 have been placed in the Library and are available at national health service trust level on a quarterly basis at http://www.doh.gov.uk/hospitalactivity/data requests/cancelled operations.htm

NHS trusts are performance managed on their performance against the NHS Plan guarantee by strategic health authorities. In doing this StHA will ensure that they have mechanisms in place which will provide them with the necessary evidence that patients whose operations have been cancelled on the day of surgery for non-clinical reasons, subsequently receive treatment at the time and hospital of their choosing, in line with the guarantee.

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