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8 Mar 2006 : Column 1634W—continued
Sentinel Computer System
Mr. Todd: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will make a statement on (a) the delivery and performance of the Sentinel system procured by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and (b) its use by manufacturers and others using the services of the agency. [53333]
Jane Kennedy: The full implementation of the Sentinel programme will transform all the MHRA's regulatory responsibilities from a paper-based system to electronic working both internally within the MHRA and externally with its stakeholders. The programme, which will run for 10 years, takes forward the MHRA's information management strategy which was developed in 2000. There have been some technical operational and performance issues in certain areas of the programme which in turn have lead to delays in the day-to-day work of the MHRA. These have or are being resolved and urgent cases are being processed promptly. Positive improvements have already been achieved and more are forecast. A core part of the Sentinel programme relates to the MHRA's ability to interact electronically with its stakeholders and several pilots have been piloted with a number of companies prior to implementation. In preparation for electronic working, some 25 million pages of historical data and documents were digitised and loaded into the system. Pharmaceutical companies will therefore have no need to re-submit this original data and will benefit from being able to immediately start working electronically.
Sexual Health
Dr. Kumar: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what extra (a) finance and (b) personnel are planned to be allocated to promoting sexual health over the next three years; and what new initiatives are planned for that period. [53530]
Caroline Flint: Primary care trusts (PCTs) are responsible for delivering sexual health services to their local populations and resource this from their baselines allocations. Sexual health and access to genito-urinary clinics is one of the six top priorities for the national health service in 2006–07.
In February 2005, individual PCTs were notified of their additional choosing health revenue allocation for sexual health. In 2006–07, an extra £91.5 million will be allocated to PCTs for sexual health modernisation which includes funding for chlamydia screening, genito-urinary medicine (GUM) and reproductive health. A further £111.5 million will be allocated in 2007–08. Also, an extra £15 million for capital was allocated this financial year for sexual health services and a further £25 million allocated in 2006–07.
The national chlamydia screening programme already has 26 regional programmes implemented, covering over 25 per cent. of PCTs in England. By April 2006, we expect to see screening happening in the whole of England. This is well ahead of the 2007 target. The
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vision is to implement a multi-faceted, evidence-based and cost-effective national prevention and control programme for genital chlamydial infection in England.
Between September 2004 and June 2005 the number of consultants in the GUM speciality increased by seven (2.1 per cent.) and between September 1997 and June 2005 by 88 (26.9 per cent.). Since 1997 the number of hospital, public health medicine and community health services staff with a speciality in GUM in England has increased by 197 (21.7 per cent.) and by 28 (3.1 per cent.) between September 2003 and September 2004 (906). In addition to increasing consultant numbers, our strategic aim is to achieve greater diversity of sexual health service provision, which should help to relieve pressure on GUM consultants. This is being supported through measures such as the GUM service review, the audit of contraception services, and greater service provision outside of the GUM setting.
John Bercow: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what steps her Department is taking to improve sexual health among young people. [55464]
Caroline Flint: The inclusion of sexual health in the six national health service key priorities for 2006–07 is a further demonstration that sexual health is regarded as important and mainstream. The national strategy for sexual health and HIV (2001) sets out our long term plan to improve sexual health and modernise services, and identified young people as being one of the groups most vulnerable to poor sexual health. A new sexual health campaign focusing on younger men and women was announced in the White Paper Choosing Health and this builds on previous commitments to public health information aspects of this strategy.
This also links closely to the cross-Government teenage pregnancy strategy, which is currently running radio, targeted magazine, satellite TV and cinema adverts aimed at 15 to 17-year-olds as part of its Want Respect, Use A Condom campaign". Furthermore, the R U Thinking" campaign is targeting 13 to 15-year-olds with messages encouraging delaying early sex in teenage magazine titles and online.
Sex and relationship education (SRE) is a key part of the personal, social and health education which is taught in all schools. This is reinforced by the healthy schools programme, which sets criteria for schools to achieve healthy school status. This includes a requirement that schools have an up to date SRE policy and implement this throughout their curriculum and pastoral provision, make good use of school nurses and sexual health outreach workers and have effective referral arrangements to specialist services. To date, over 75 per cent. of schools are participating in the programme.
Added to this is the accelerated roll-out of the national Chlamydia screening programme which targets the sexually active under-25s, currently expected to reach 80 per cent. coverage of primary care trusts in England by April 2006. We are also piloting Chlamydia screening through Boots pharmacies in London and making improvements to contraception services.
In addition to this national work, PCTs are responsible for providing sexual health services and health promotion which meet the needs of their local populations. To support them in this role, the
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Department has published good practice guidance and recommended standards, which include specific guidance in respect of services for young people. All of these documents are available on the Department's website at www.dh.gov.uk
Smoking
Mr. Ian Austin: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what representations her Department has received on elastic cigarettes developed by British American Tobacco; and what assessment she has made of their health effects. [56999]
Caroline Flint: Elastic cigarettes is a term explained in The Lancet March 4 2006 paper, Secret science: tobacco industry research on smoking behaviour and cigarette toxicity" by Hammond D et al. In this paper, the authors report that
BAT developed elastic cigarettes that produced low yields under standard testing procedure, whereas in consumers' hands they elicited more intensive smoking and provided higher concentrations of tar and nicotine to smokers."
In the paper, the term smoke elasticity is reference to a 1983 British American Tobacco (BAT) research conference in Brazil.
The Department is not aware of specific representations about BAT elastic cigarettes and no specific assessment therefore made. General awareness among the scientific community about misleading terms on cigarettes packs resulted in the introduction of EU Directive 2001/37/EC which lead to the banning of terms such as low tar, light, ultra-light and mild from cigarette packs sold in the United Kingdom from October 2003 and other tobacco products from October 2004.
Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people she estimates have (a) started and (b) stopped smoking in each quarter of each of the last five years. [53879]
Caroline Flint: The information is not available in the form requested.
We are only able to provide data on the number of people who set a quit date through the NHS Stop Smoking Services and of those, how many had successfully quit (based on self report), in England.
The following table provides quarterly and annual data on the monitoring of the NHS Stop Smoking Services, for the period April 2000 to September 2005.
(50) Aged 16 and over.
(51) A client is counted as having successfully quit smoking at the four week follow-up if he/she has not smoked at all since two weeks after the quit date. The figures presented here are based on self-report of smoking status by the client at the four week follow-up.
Notes:
1. 2005–06 Quarter one and two figures are provisional.
2. Current data and information on NHS Stop Smoking Services is available at: http://www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs/ICpubfolder_view
3. Historic data and information on NHS Stop Smoking Services can be found at: http://www.dh.gov.uk/PublicationsAndStatistics/Statistics/StatisticalWorkAreas/StatisticalPublicHealth/Statistical
PublicHealthArticle/fs/en?CONTENT_ID=4032542&chk=
GhPZ%2By
Source:
NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre, Lifestyles Statistics
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Keith Vaz: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much her Department spent on treating smoking-related illnesses in each of the past five years. [53877]
Caroline Flint: The information is not available in the form requested.
The latest estimated data on the cost to the national health service of treating smoking-related illnesses is between £1.4 to £1.7 billion every year in terms of general practitioner visits, prescriptions, treatment and operations.
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