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7 Nov 2006 : Column 1315W—continued

School Nurses

Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress has been made against the commitment made in her Department’s White Paper, Choosing Health, to ensure that every secondary school and cluster of primary schools will have one full-time qualified school nurse. [97925]

Ms Rosie Winterton: The September 2005 work force census showed that there were 2,887 (1,913 full-time equivalent) qualified nurses working in the school nursing service in England, an increase of 478 (19.8 per cent.) since 2004.

Severance Packages

Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the total cost of severance packages to the NHS was in each year since 1997-98 in (a) real and (b) nominal terms; and what estimate she has made of the total cost of severance packages to the NHS in 2006-07. [94985]

Ms Rosie Winterton: Information on the cost of severance packages is not held centrally and no reliable estimate can be made of the total cost of severance packages in the national health service in 2006-07.

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Staff Pay

Mr. Fallon: To ask the Secretary of State for Health in how many years since 1997 the pay settlement forher Department’s staff has been implemented later than 1 August; and when she expects to implement the 2006 settlement. [92192]

Ms Rosie Winterton: The Department has made every effort to implement the pay award on time on the 1 August. However, the culmination of an agreed pay award is dependant on a number of factors, which are outside the Department’s control. As a result, the Department was only able to pay the award on time, once, in 1997 which was in the second year of a two-year pay deal.

This year we are negotiating both a multi-year pay deal and introducing a new reward strategy. We started the process immediately after the 2005 pay negotiations with the trade unions, and are now coming to the end of our negotiations. We have now completed pay negotiations and hope to implement the award by the end of the year, subject to the outcome of the trade union ballot.

Stem Cell Research

Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if she will bring forward legislation with similar provisions to the Alternative Pluripotent Stem Cell Therapies Enhancement Act passed by the United States Senate in July; and if she will make a statement. [89708]

Andy Burnham: The Government are committed to supporting all forms of stem cell research in the United Kingdom (UK) and have doubled their commitmentfor public sector spending on stem cell research to£100 million over the next two years.

The current legislative framework for stem cell research in the UK has helped make this country a recognised international leader in the field. Any future legislation necessary in this area will be drafted with the objective of consolidating and enhancing the ability of scientists to develop new therapies.

Mr. Hayes: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what her position is on EU level controls on stem cell research; and if she will make a statement. [90533]

Andy Burnham: Control of stem cell research across the European Union is carried out at member state level in accordance with the laws of each individual state, a position which the Government support. The United Kingdom (UK) is a global leader in stem cell research. In order to maintain this lead, the Government have allocated an additional £50 million to this work, bringing total investment up to£100 millon, for stem cell research between 2006 to 2008. In addition, UK researchers may apply for EU (FP7) funding if the research meets the necessary criteria.

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Sussex Health Professionals

Tim Loughton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) full-time and (b) part-time(i) doctors, (ii) nurses and (iii) other health professionals work at (A) the Royal Sussex county
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hospital, (B) Worthing hospital and (C) Southlands hospital in West Sussex. [93357]

Ms Rosie Winterton: The information requested is only held at trust-level. The following table contains the requested information for Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS trust and Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS trust.

Hospital and community health services: medical and dental and non-medical staff within specified organisations by nature of contract, as at 30 September 2005
Number (headcount)
	Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust				Worthing and Southlands Hospitals NHS Trust
	All staff	Full-time	Part-time	Other( 1)	All staff	Full-time	Part-time	Other( 1)
All medical and dental staff(2)	685	619	59	7	304	262	42	0
Qualified nursing, midwifery and health visiting staff	2,127	1,255	822	50	1,199	570	469	160
Qualified scientific, therapeutic and technical staff	731	488	243	0	355	219	136	0
(1) Includes fixed-term appointments, staff with honorary contracts and bank nurses. (2) Medical and dental staff that have maximum part-time contracts are added to those staff with full-time contracts in order to reflect their substantially whole-time commitment. Sources: 1. The Information Centre for health and social care medical and dental workforce census. 2. The Information Centre for health and social care non-medical workforce census.

Umbilican Cord Blood

Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what her policy is on the collection and storage of umbilican cord blood; and if she will make a statement. [97937]

Caroline Flint: The Government are committed to exploring the use of all forms of stem cells to provide treatments for patients. Placental/umbilical cord blood donations provide a unique source of stem cells, particularly for patients from ethnic minorities.

The Department supports the collection of cord blood by the NHS Cord Blood Bank at Edgware, which is operated by the National Blood Service (NBS). The collections are donated voluntarily, to be used for stem cell transplantation for patients in the United Kingdom or abroad. The NHS Cord Blood Bank currently collects these cord blood stem cells from three collection sites—Barnet General, Northwick Park and Luton and Dunstable hospitals.

We are committed to supporting and facilitating cord blood transplants wherever possible. In this financial year the Department will provide the NBS with £3.5 million to help support the storage and use of bone marrow and peripheral blood stem cells, including the NHS Cord Blood Bank.

There are a number of commercial cord blood banks that offer mothers the opportunity to store their own baby’s cord blood stem cells for their own family’s use. At present, the Department does not recommend routine commercial cord blood collection and stem-cell storage.

Under-served Markets Project

Harry Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Health in which areas her Department’s under-served markets project is being applied; what additional resources have been allocated to the project; and if she will make a statement. [95806]

Caroline Flint: This Department is offering dedicated support to the primary care trusts (PCTs) with fewest general practitioners for their populations. The aim is to help those PCTs to improve delivery of their local primary care services. Any new services will be paid for locally by PCTs from their allocations which have increased substantially but procurement costs will be met by the Department. The localities involved are identified in figure 3.2 of the White Paper, “Our Health Our Care Our Say”.

Waiting Lists/Times

Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the waiting times have been for (a) heart and (b) cancer operations in Bolsover constituency in each year since 1997. [96950]

Andy Burnham: The information requested is not available in the format required. However, the count of mean and median waiting times in the Bolsover constituency, where North Eastern Derbyshire PCT was the PCT area of residence for heart operations, is contained in the following table.

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	Mean waiting time in days	Median waiting time in days
1996-97	149.5	107
1997-98	171	136
1998-99	154.9	101
1999-2000	130.9	80
2000-01	147.7	104
2001-02	142	112
2002-03	125.9	102
2003-04	117.4	108
2004-05	92.4	89
Notes We cannot provide information on the waiting times for cancer operations as it is too difficult to specify which operations are specifically for treating cancer. For example, some procedures may be used to treat cancer but may also be used to treat other conditions. Finished admission episodes: A finished admission episode is the first period of in-patient care under one consultant within one healthcare provider. Please note that admissions do not represent the number of in-patients, as a person may have more than one admission within the year. Data quality: Hospital episode statistics (HES) are compiled from data sent by over 300 NHS trusts and primary care trusts (PCTs) in England. The Health and Social Care Information Centre liaises closely with these organisations to encourage submission of complete and valid data and seeks to minimise inaccuracies and the effect of missing and invalid data via HES processes. Whilst this brings about improvement over time, some shortcomings remain. Ungrossed data: Figures have not been adjusted for shortfalls in data (i.e. the data are ungrossed). Main operation The main operation is the first recorded operation in the HES data set and is usually the most resource intensive procedure performed during the episode. It is appropriate to use main operation when looking at admission details, eg. time waited, but the figures for ‘all operations count of episodes’ give a more complete count of episodes with an operation. OPCS CODES OPCS CODES K01-K71 Used for heart operations. Primary care trust (PCT) and strategic health authority (SHA) data quality: PCT and SHA data were added to historic data-years in the HES database using 2002-03 boundaries, as a one-off exercise in 2004. The quality of the data on PCT of treatment and SHA of treatment is poor in 1996-97, 1997-98 and 1998-99, with over a third of all finished episodes having missing values in these years. Data quality of PCT of GP practice and SHA of GP practice in 1997-98 and 1998-99 is also poor, with a high proportion missing values where practices changed or ceased to exist. There is less change in completeness of the residence-based fields over time, where the majority of unknown values are due to missing postcodes on birth episodes. Users of time series analysis including these years need to be aware of these issues in their interpretation of the data. Time waited (days): Time waited statistics from hospital episode statistics (HES) are not the same as the published waiting list statistics. HES provides counts and time waited for all patients admitted to hospital within a given period whereas the published waiting list statistics count those waiting for treatment on a specific date and how long they have been on the waiting list. Also, HES calculates the time waited as the difference between the admission and decision to admit dates. Unlike published waiting list statistics, this is not adjusted for self-deferrals or periods of medical/social suspension. Source: Hospital episode statistics (HES), The Information Centre for Health and Social Care

Mr. Lansley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what the (a) mean and (b) median waiting time for(i) in-patients and (ii) out-patients was in each year since 2002 (A) in total and (B) in each primary care trust which commissioned their care. [96350]

Andy Burnham: The information requested has been placed in the Library.

Figures for the end of March for each year from 2000 to 2005 are quoted. Primary care trust-level data were not available in March 2002, hence June 2002 is provided for the year instead. For 2006, June data are provided as this is the latest set of figures available.

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Watford General Hospital

Mr. Gauke: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what progress has been made with the proposed private finance initiative redevelopment of Watford general hospital; and if she will make a statement. [100111]

Andy Burnham: It is the responsibility of primary care trusts (PCTs) and strategic health authorities to analyse their local situation and develop plans, in liaison with their local national health service trusts and primary care providers, to deliver high quality NHS services.

Hertfordshire PCT has been tasked, by East of England strategic health authority, to carry out a review of the “Investing In Your Health” strategy looking at east and north and west Hertfordshire. In particular whether the current configuration plans are financially sustainable and, if not, the degree of change that would be required.

The West Hertfordshire NHS trust capital investment scheme is one of those included in the private finance initiative reappraisal exercise which the Government announced in January. Decisions have already been announced on a number of the schemes involved in the reappraisal; that concerning West Hertfordshire will be made in due course and will of course have to take into account the factors mentioned above.

Weighted Capitation Model

Mr. Blunt: To ask the Secretary of State for Health when the weighted capitation model was introduced. [96254]

Andy Burnham: The weighted capitation formula was first used for the 1976-77 revenue allocations, further to the Resource Allocation Working Party (RAWP) recommendation that financial resources should be distributed on the basis of population, weighted according to need for healthcare and the unavoidable cost of providing healthcare services.

The RAWP was set up “with a view to establishing a pattern of distribution responsive objectively, equitably and efficiently to relative need and to make recommendations”. The underlying objective of resource allocation was interpreted by RAWP to be “equal opportunity of access to health care for people at equal risk”.

Mr. Blunt: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many times the weighted capitation model and its predecessors have been adjusted since 1997. [96333]

Andy Burnham: The changes made to the weighted capitation formula are set out in the “Resource Allocation: weighted capitation formula” booklets (editions two to five) which are available in the Library.

Copies of editions three to five can be found on the Department’s website at www.dh.gov.uk/allocations.

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