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23 Jun 2008 : Column 100W—continued
Terrorism: Detainees
Kate Hoey: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department where suspects are held under the provisions of counter-terrorism legislation in pre-charge detention; whether they are allowed to see family visitors; whether they are allowed access to print, visual and online media; and if she will make a statement. [211480]
Mr. McNulty: PACE code H which covers the detention, treatment and questioning by police officers of persons under section 41 of, and schedule 8 to, the Terrorism Act 2000 states that:
(i) Where a warrant is issued which authorises detention beyond a period of 14 days from the time of arrest, the detainee must be transferred from detention in a police station to detention in a designated prison unless the detained person requests to be detained in a police station and this can be accommodated or there are reasonable grounds for believing that transferring the person to prison may hinder a terrorism investigation, delay the charge or release of the individual or otherwise prevent the investigation from proceeding efficiently and expeditiously (para 14.5).
(ii) If the detainee agrees, they may receive visits from friends, family or others likely to take an interest in their welfare, at the custody officer’s discretion (para 5.4)
(iii) The detainee shall be given writing materials, on request, and allowed to telephone one person for a reasonable period of time at the discretion of an inspector or above (para 5.6).
UK Border Agency: Stationery
Damian Green: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how much the UK Border Agency and its predecessors spent on (a) branded and (b) non-branded stationery in each year since 1997. [212355]
Mr. Byrne: Annual spend by the UK Border Agency and its predecessors is included within the Department's expenditure on (a) branded and (b) non-branded stationery. For information on the Department's expenditure on these items, I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 12 June 2008, Official R eport, column 471W. Discrete spend for the UK Border Agency and its predecessors on (a) branded and (b) non-branded stationery was not separately recorded and to provide this information would incur disproportionate cost.
Work Permits
Mr. Soames: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many holders of work permits were given indefinite leave to remain in the UK in each of the last 10 years. [212858]
Mr. Byrne [holding answer 20 June 2008]: The requested information on work permit holders granted indefinite leave to remain (settlement) is published in Table 5.3 in the Home Office Command Paper ‘Control of Immigration: Statistics United Kingdom 2006’ which is available from the Library of the House and from the Home Office Research, Development and Statistics website at:
Data for 2007 are due to be published in August.
Written Questions: Government Responses
Mr. Frank Field: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department when she plans to answer Question 203949 tabled on 30 April 2008, on counter-terrorism. [208837]
Mr. McNulty [holding answer 5 June 2008]: I replied to my right hon. Friend on 16 June 2008, Official Report, columns 685-86W.
Health
Accident and Emergency Departments: Crimes of Violence
David Simpson:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many accident and emergency staff were
hospitalised as a result of being assaulted while on duty in each of the last three years, broken down by region. [211326]
Ann Keen: This information is not available centrally and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost.
For information on reported physical assaults I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) on 14 May 2008, Official Report, column 1654W.
Air Ambulance Services
Mr. Oaten: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 16 June 2008, Official Report, column 744W, on air ambulance services, which air ambulance personnel may be classified as qualified clinical staff. [213261]
Mr. Bradshaw: It is our understanding that clinical staffing arrangements on air ambulances vary considerably from charity to charity, with different combinations of paramedics, doctors, and technicians on board. It will be for the national health service and air ambulance charities to agree which staff should be funded by the NHS.
Alcoholic Drinks: Health Education
Mr. Don Foster: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much has been spent on the Know Your Limits campaign; and what (a) mechanisms, (b) baselines and (c) targets have been established to measure the effectiveness of the campaign. [207033]
Dawn Primarolo: On 19 May 2008, the Government launched the first major advertising campaign to raise awareness about units and to help people to estimate how much alcohol they drink. The Government will spend £10 million this year on national alcohol campaigns.
We have a number of tools in place to evaluate the effectiveness of the Know Your Limits (KYL) campaign:
throughout the campaign's development we have tested potential messaging in independent qualitative creative development research to ensure creative material engages and resonates with the target audience;
we have quantitative campaign tracking research in place which will measure pre to post shifts in awareness, understanding, attitudes and motivations towards alcohol consumption in response to the campaign and will continue to measure these factors throughout the campaign's life. We will be able to benchmark these results against other Government campaigns when establishing targets; and
the campaign will also be evaluated in terms of how effectively it generates responses and requests for further information and advice through online, phone and face to face services. These data will again be benchmarked against other Government campaigns to aid target setting.
Alcoholic Drinks: Misuse
Mr. Stewart Jackson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health in how many primary care trusts in (a) Cambridgeshire and (b) the east of England are the Models of Care for Alcohol Misusers best practice guidelines being implemented; and if he will make a statement. [213090]
Mr. Bradshaw: This information is not centrally held.
The responsibility for implementing Models of Care for Alcohol Misusers (MoCAM) lies with individual primary care trusts. The hon. Member may therefore wish to raise this locally.
Ambulance Services: Fuels
Bob Spink: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent representations he has received on the supply of fuel to ambulances during the strike by fuel supply drivers. [212159]
Mr. Bradshaw: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has received only one representation on the subject of fuel for ambulances during the fuel tanker drivers' strike. This was a parliamentary question received from the hon. Member.
Antidepressants
Stephen Hesford: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research has been carried out by his Department to establish the long-term effects of Prozac and related drugs on mental health. [211264]
Dawn Primarolo: The Department has not commissioned research into the long-term effects of Prozac and other related drugs on mental health.
Cancer: Drugs
Mr. Baron: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what unit cost the NHS pays for the drug cetuximab; what price for cetuximab it charges patients being seen privately in an NHS setting; and what estimate he has made of the full market price per unit. [210471]
Dawn Primarolo [holding answer 12 June 2008]: As listed in the “British National Formulary”, hospitals purchasing cetuximab pay the following prices:
| £ | |
The Department does not hold information on charges made by the national health service to private patients.
Care Quality Commission
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what powers he plans for the Care Quality Commission to have to conduct topic-based studies into specific aspects of health and social care. [212189]
Mr. Bradshaw: Clause 44 of the Health and Social Care Bill makes provision for the Care Quality Commission to carry out special reviews and investigations.
Carers
Mr. Marsden: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment he has made of the health impact on carers of balancing work with care responsibilities; if he will assess the merits of the introduction of a care voucher scheme, similar to that in operation for child care; and if he will make a statement. [162409]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: In April 2003, the Government introduced a new right for parents of children up to six and disabled children up to 18, to request flexible working and put a duty on the employer to consider their request seriously. The Work and Families Act 2006 extended this right to carers of adults from April 2007. Most carers will be given the right to request to vary their contract of employment to enable them more flexibility to carry out their out of work responsibilities.
Last week, we published the new cross-government carers’ strategy. This included significant new measures to enable carers to be better able to combine paid employment with their caring role through enhanced flexible working opportunities and increased skills training opportunities. The strategy announced some £38 million of new investment to help deliver these commitments.
We will be working with employers to develop and disseminate a good practice guide for supporting carers in the workplace—a guide that will not only considerably help individual carers themselves, but which will also point up the strong economic argument for enabling employers to retain the valuable skills that their employees have developed over time.
Carers: Wales
Mr. Dai Davies: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he has had with his counterpart in the Welsh Assembly Government on the implementation of the National Carers Strategy. [211942]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: The health, social care and young carer elements in the National Carers Strategy—‘Carers at the heart of 21st century families and communities: A caring system on your side. A life of your own’, are relevant to the England only—although all issues pertaining to benefits and income are applicable United Kingdom-wide. Copies of this publication are available in the Library. We are working closely with all our partners in the devolved Administrations who are also reviewing their policies and strategies around carers.
CJD
Mr. Hancock: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what research his Department has commissioned or evaluated on (a) the origins, (b) a cure and (c) the potential incubation period of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. [211954]
Dawn Primarolo:
In 1990 the Department established the National Surveillance Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Unit (NCJDSU), which we continue to fund. The NCJDSU monitors all cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) in the United Kingdom in order to investigate each case
by clinical examination, clinical investigations, neuropathological examination, genetic analysis, molecular biological studies, collecting basic epidemiological data and carrying out a case-control study to:
provide accurate data on the incidence of CJD, including variant CJD (vCJD);
investigate risk factors for CJD, including vCJD;
identify the mechanism of transmission of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) to the human population;
provide estimates of short-term and long-term trends in the rate of occurrence of vCJD;
evaluate the potential risks of onward transmission of vCJD, including through iatrogenic routes;
identify any novel forms of human spongiform encephalopathy;
evaluate case definitions of CJD, including vCJD; and
evaluate diagnostic tests for CJD, including vCJD.
The NCJDSU's annual reports which include evaluations of the origin and potential incubation period of vCJD are available at
The Department also has a ring-fenced budget for commissioning variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease research. The funded programme of current studies and projects, including those studies which are complete and await formal closure, includes the following of relevance to origins, cure and incubation period:
Assessing the Feasibility of accessing dental case records for detailed dental histories in CJD cases and controls
Conditional expression of PrP in the gut of transgenic mice to investigate the uptake of infectivity in the gut in the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs)
Examination of the potential for transmission of vCJD through dentistry
Investigating dental treatment as a possible risk factor for vCJD
Investigation into transmissibility of TSEs via blood
National Prion monitoring cohort
Predicting future numbers of cases of vCJD
Retrospective review of CJD and related disorders
Surveillance for asymptomatic Prion infection in primary immunodeficiency patients exposed to UK sourced immunoglobulin
The effect of Leucodepletion on transmission of BSE by transfusion of sheep blood components
To undertake prospective multisource surveillance for all cases of progressive intellectual and neurological deterioration (PIND) occurring in children in the UK
Transfusion medicine epidemiology review (TMER)
vCJD tissue infectivity studies
Investigation of Pentosan Polysulphate as a potential prophylactic agent against the transmission of vCJD by blood products
Prion 1 clinical trial: Quinacrine for human Prion disease
Strategies to inhibit neurodegeneration in Prion disease
The development of an effective treatment for Prion infection of humans.
Past studies commissioned by the Department are included in the Medical Research Council's (MRCs) UK TSE Portfolio which is available at:
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