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Hepatitis C

Chris Grayling: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when he expects to finalise compensation arrangements for those who contracted hepatitis C from blood transfusions. [173232]

Andrew Selous: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a further statement on the payment of compensation to patients who were infected with hepatitis C as a result of NHS treatment. [173377]

Miss Melanie Johnson: Work is progressing to finalise the arrangements, to begin making ex-gratia payments. The company that will disburse payments, the Skipton Fund, was incorporated on 25 March. The four United Kingdom health departments expect the Skipton Fund to be operational shortly.

Medical Negligence

Mr. Randall: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what code of practice is in place to prevent conflicts of
 
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interest concerning solicitors whose practices undertake medical negligence cases who are a (a) board member and (b) chairman of a health trust. [173308]

Mr. Hutton: The codes of conduct and code accountability for national health service boards require that all board members should declare any conflict of interest that arises in the course of conducting NHS business. The codes also requires that board members should declare any business interests in the field of health and social care which should be formally recorded in the minutes of the board and entered into a register which is available to the public. When a conflict of interest is established, the board member involved is also required to withdraw from any related board discussion and not play any part in the relevant discussion or decision. All NHS board members are required on appointment to sign an undertaking that they will comply with the provisions of the codes. A copy of the codes is available in the Library.
 
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NHS Information Technology

Mr. Norman: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) clinical and (b) non-clinical NHS staff had access to e-mail and web browsing by (i) March 2003 and (ii) March 2004. [171825R]

Mr. Hutton: Numbers of national health service staff with email and web browsing access are shown in the table.

	March 2003	March 2004
Clinical staff	715,888	874,813
Total NHS staff	1,022,488	1,048,485

NHS Staff (Wirral, South)

Mr. Ben Chapman: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make a statement on the levels of elective admissions to the NHS in Wirral South in the past five years. [172690]

Miss Melanie Johnson: I refer my hon. Friend to the response I gave on 10 May 2004, Official Report, columns 162–63W.

Nurse Training

Mr. Burstow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many whole-time equivalent (a) health visitors, (b) school nurses, (c) district nurses and (d) community psychiatric nurses were in training in each region in September of each year since 1997, broken down by (i) gender and (ii) ethnic origin. [172707]

Mr. Hutton: Information on the number of whole-time equivalent health visitors, school nurses, district nurses and community psychiatric nurses in training in each national health service region as constituted until 31 March 1998 is shown in Table 1, for each national health service region as constituted between 1 April 1998 and 31 March 2001 is shown in Table 2, and for each Government office region between 1 April 2001 and 31 March 2002 is shown in Table 3.

Information on the gender and ethnic origin of health visitors, school nurses, district nurses and community psychiatric nurses, in training is not available.
Table 1: Student populations by regional office area, 1997–98 Whole-time equivalents

	School nurses	District nurses	Health visitors	Community psychiatric nurses
England	128	603	623	333
Northern and Yorkshire	35	120	115	51
Trent	—	42	52	—
Anglia and Oxford	8	75	73	71
North Thames	16	76	84	65
South Thames	34	119	117	73
South and West	—	57	61	—
West Midlands	35	62	53	43
North West	—	53	69	31

Source:
Finance and Workforce Information Returns.





 
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Table 2: Student populations by regional office area Whole-time equivalents

	School nurses	District nurses	Health visitors	Community psychiatric nurses
1998–99
England	119	542	580	250
Northern and Yorkshire	31	103	129	13
Trent	7	50	55	3
West Midlands	19	62	52	40
North West	14	64	76	37
Eastern	5	38	38	26
London	24	93	101	55
South East	19	96	89	64
South West	1	36	42	13
1999–2000
England	137	572	598	252
Northern and Yorkshire	27	127	142	38
Trent	9	43	53	3
West Midlands	18	67	52	34
North West	23	71	84	30
Eastern	10	46	53	38
London	24	101	99	43
South East	20	89	81	51
South West	7	28	34	16
2000–01
England	162	560	710	207
Northern and Yorkshire	18	80	190	6
Trent	14	49	59	—
West Midlands	20	67	60	34
North West	23	71	84	30
Eastern	18	53	68	29
London	28	103	105	67
South East	21	96	101	34
South West	20	42	44	7

Source:
Finance and Workforce Information Returns.




Table 3: Student populations by Government regional office area, 2001–02 Whole-time equivalents

	School nurses	District nurses	Health visitors	Community psychiatric nurses
England	147	520	622	160
North East	10	61	69	6
North West	31	84	96	21
Yorkshire and the Humber	25	102	99	—
East Midlands	6	—	61	—
West Midlands	24	68	64	41
East of England	4	14	18	12
London	28	100	113	57
South East	20	92	104	24
South West	—	—	—	—

Source:
Finance and Workforce Information Returns.

Statins (Warrington, North)

Helen Jones: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people in Warrington North are being treated with statins. [172846]

Miss Melanie Johnson: The information requested is not collected on a constituency basis and neither is the number of people currently being prescribed statins. However, the number of statins prescribed for Warrington Primary Care Trust is shown in the table.
 
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Total number of statins prescribed by general practitioner practices in the community, in England, for the year beginning January 2003.

Region/type of region	Prescription items	Prescription items per 1,000 population
Warrington (PCT)	99,462	522
Cheshire and Merseyside       (SHA)	1,363,439	582
England Total(10)	21,606,624	441

⁽¹⁰⁾ The England total includes a small number of prescription items, prescribed by GPs, that the PPA have been unable to allocate to a PCT or SHA.
Notes:
1. The information, by PCT and strategic health authority (SHA), was obtained from the Prescribing Analysis and Cost (PACT) system, which covers prescriptions prescribed by general practitioner practices and dispensed in the community. Prescriptions written within a GP practice but dispensed outside the PCT or SHA will be included in the PCT or SHA in which, respectively, the GP practice is based. Prescriptions written in England but dispensed outside England are included. Prescriptions written in Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man but dispensed in England are excluded.
2. Prescriptions are written on a prescription form. Each single item written on the form is counted as a prescription item.
3. The figures for Statins represent data on the following chemical entities: atorvastatin; cerivastatin; fluvastatin sodium; lovastatin; pravastatin sodium; rosuvastatin calcium; simvastatin.




 
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