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3 Feb 2010 : Column 382W—continued
Information on the abortion rate per 1,000 women aged between 15 and 44 years by PCT for each month in 2008 has been placed in the Library. The 2009 annual abortion data will be published on 25 May 2010.
Blood: Donors
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health with reference to the recommendations of the Advisory Committee on Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs, whether his Department has made a decision on the proposed introduction of the P-Capt filter into paediatrics. [314515]
Gillian Merron: This advice was received by the Department following the October 2009 meeting of the Advisory Committee on Safety of Blood, Tissues and Organs. The Department is currently carrying out an assessment of the potential impact of implementation of this advice on the national health service.
CJD
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what recent assessment his Department has made of the level of risk of contracting variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease through podiatric procedures; and whether he has made an assessment of the (a) merits and (b) cost of implementing measures to mitigate that risk; [314638]
(2) what recent assessment his Department has made of the level of risk of contracting variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease through brain surgery procedures; and whether he has made an assessment of the (a) merits and (b) cost of implementing measures to mitigate that risk; [314643]
(3) what recent assessment his Department has made of the level of risk of contracting variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease through ophthalmological procedures; and whether he has made an assessment of the (a) merits and (b) cost of implementing measures to mitigate that risk. [314644]
Gillian Merron: The Department takes advice from the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens (ACDP) on the variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) risk associated with different tissues and different surgical procedures, and takes a precautionary approach to handling such risks. ACDP's advice ranks brain and rear of eye (contacted in some ophthalmic surgery) tissues, and surgery on these tissues, as at high level of potential risk and has published guidance on measures to reduce the risks. All ACDP's advice is available at "Guidance from the ACDP TSE Working Group":
The Department's 2001 risk assessment for transmission of vCJD via surgical instruments is published at "Risk assessment for transmission of vCJD via surgical instruments: a modelling approach and numerical scenarios:"
A 2005 review of this work, assessing the risk of vCJD transmission via surgery: an interim review, is published at:
Copies of these documents have been placed in the Library-
There has been no specific assessment of the level of risk of contracting vCJD through podiatric procedures. ACDP considers these procedures as low risk on the basis of tissue infectivity and therefore no specific measures are required. As for all surgery high standards of instrument decontamination should be maintained.
Departmental Manpower
Mr. Philip Hammond: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many employees in (a) his Department and (b) each of its agencies are in transition prior to being managed out; how long on average the transition window between notification and exit has been in (i) his Department and (ii) each of its agencies in each of the last five years; what estimate he has made of the salary costs of staff in transition in each such year; and what proportion of employees in transition were classed as being so for more than six months in each year. [313240]
Phil Hope: The Department does not formally have staff in transition. Where staff are displaced from their current post, their redeployment is managed through a priority posting pool. On 1 January 2010 there were 13 displaced staff in the pool. This number includes displaced staff across all grades.
The Department does not record information about how long each individual remains in the pool, but most do secure a permanent post within six months.
Over the last five years, a small number of staff have left the Department under compulsory redundancy terms, following a period of redeployment. These are shown in the following table:
| Number of compulsory redundancies | |
| (1)Up to December 2009 | |
The core Department's records do not show how long each of these staff were displaced before leaving the Department.
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) reports that no staff were "in transition" over the last five years.
The NHS Purchasing and Supply Agency (PASA) has been subject to a significant change programme as the functions of the agency are in the process of being transferred to other organisations. The closure of PASA is being effected over the 2009-10 financial year. No other data is available from PASA for the previous five years. In 2009-10 to date the number of staff initially placed at risk, was 236. Of these 108 were made compulsorily redundant the remainder have been redeployed or are currently being redeployed. Average period between notification and exit of those PASA staff was four months. The total salary costs of PASA staff in transition was £14,998,475 and the overall proportion of employees in transition for more than six months was 22 per cent.
Health Services: Voluntary Work
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much funding his Department has allocated to the Opportunities for Volunteering scheme in each of the last five financial years; and how much funding he plans to allocate to the health and social care volunteering fund in the next five financial years. [314513]
Phil Hope: Over the next three years, the existing OFV scheme will be wound-down concurrently as the funding to the new volunteering fund is correspondingly increased. The total budget available for volunteering will remain the same subject to the outcome of the next spending review. Allocations to the OFV scheme will continue through 2010-11 and 2011-12 but there will be a natural tapering of these as there will be no further OFV grants awarded.
Funding allocated to Opportunities for Volunteering (OFV) in each of the last five financial years is as follows:
| Financial year | Allocation (£) |
It is not possible to provide definitive information on the next five years' allocation of funding to the Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund as budgets for 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14 will be subject to the outcome of the next spending review. However, the contract for the Health and Social Care Volunteering Fund has been awarded for three years starting in 2009-10, with funding estimated in the contract terms as follows:
| Financial Year | Allocation (£) |
Home Care Services
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 9 December 2009, Official Report, column 495W, on social services, whether the figures given in table 2 of the Personal Care at Home Bill impact assessment for additional costs relate to millions of pounds. [314570]
Phil Hope: The additional cost figures in table 2 of the Personal Care at Home Bill impact assessment are shown in millions of pounds. This is labelled in the amended version of the impact assessment, which was published on 11 January 2010. A copy has already been placed in Library.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what methodology was used to calculate the costs in (a) Annex B of the impact assessment for the Personal Care at Home Bill, (b) table 13 of the PSSRU discussion paper 2644 and (c) table 35e of his Department's memorandum contained in HC 269-i. [314640]
Phil Hope: The model referred to in paragraphs 5.12, 5.13 and Annex B of the impact assessment is still under development. For this reason, its output has not been incorporated into any of the figures reported in the impact assessment. The model will continue to be updated and refined as more information becomes available.
The Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) has constructed a dynamic microsimulation model to produce estimates for the Green and White Papers of the costs and other impacts of reforms to the funding system for care and support for older people. The model consists of data on almost 30,000 older people in waves 3 to 15 of the British Household Panel Survey. The data include information on each person's age, gender, household composition, disability (activities of daily living), income, savings, receipt of informal care and other characteristics.
Table 13 of PSSRU discussion paper 2644 sets out the unit costs of residential care and community care that are used in the modelling. These are derived from data provided by local authorities via the Personal Social Services (PSS) EX1 return. They are assumed to increase by 2 per cent. per year in real terms, in line with expected rises in real earnings.
The NHS Information Centre provides the information for part (c) Table 35e as a response to a Health Select Committee Question. This table contains the unit costs for the hourly rate for home care provided or commissioned by Councils with Adult Social Services Responsibilities (CASSRs) to adults (aged 18 and over).
The unit cost of services provided or commissioned by CASSRs to adults is collected via the PSS EX1 return. The PSS EX1 return collects both financial and activity information and has been the responsibility of the NHS Information Centre since April 2005. Prior to this date data were collected by the Department.
The unit costs are average costs and are calculated using gross total cost for home care (i.e. including capital charges and before deducting client contributions) divided by the total number of home help/care contact hours for all adults (aged 18 and over) during a sample week, multiplied by 52.
The activity figures for clients receiving home care are taken from a survey in a typical week in September each year. The figures are for services provided or commissioned by a local authority. This will exclude private arrangements by an individual.
In 2007-08 a change has been made to the definition of capital charges to bring the PSS EX1 data in line with the 2006 local authority Accounting Statement of Recommended Practice. This means that total cost cannot be compared historically.
A new column was added to the PSS EX1 return in 2007-08 to record grants to voluntary organisations against the appropriate service line to allow more meaningful unit costs for provision by others to be calculated. Grants are now excluded from the unit cost expenditure as only activity relating to the CASSR care plan can be recorded and used in the unit cost calculation. This change combined with the change to the definition of capital charges which applies to both own provision and provision by others means that the unit costs for 2007-08 cannot be compared with previous years.
Mr. Stephen O'Brien:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what methodology was used to calculate the number of critical care users (a) in table 10 of the
PSSRU discussion paper 2644 and (b) table 2 of the impact assessment for the Personal Care at Home Bill. [314641]
Phil Hope: The Personal Social Services Research Unit (PSSRU) has constructed a dynamic microsimulation model to produce estimates for the Green and White Papers of the costs and other impacts of reforms to the funding system for care and support for older people. The model consists of data on almost 30,000 older people in waves 3 to 15 of the British Household Panel Survey. The data include information on each person's age, gender, household composition, disability (affecting activities of daily living (ADLs)), income, savings, receipt of informal care and other characteristics. The modelling assumes that disability rates (by age and gender) remain constant over time.
Each disabled person in the model is assigned:
informal care, which is imputed on the basis of disability and living alone;
Fair Access to Care Services (FACS) guidance category, which is imputed on the basis of disability and other factors; and
a normative care package, assigned on the basis of their needs (disability and household composition).
Table 10 of PSSRU discussion paper 2644 sets out the numbers of older people in the model that fall into each level of need, as defined in FACS, based on their severity of impairment, before any consideration of their informal care situation. Table 12 sets out similar information after consideration of informal care.
The starting point for the estimates of service users who are defined as critical under FACS reporting difficulty with four or more ADLs shown in table 2 of the Impact Assessment is an estimate of the number of FACS critical users at home taken from PSSRU's microsimulation model for older people. This initial estimate differs from the FACS critical volume figure in table 10 of the PSSRU discussion paper 2644 in two important regards. First, the figures in the discussion paper relate to those in both residential and domiciliary settings, whereas what is important for the purpose of the Impact Assessment is the number of those living at home. In practice, almost all those in a residential care setting are likely to have critical needs. And secondly, the figures in the discussion paper are estimated before informal care considerations. Since receipt or not of informal care is part of the assessment of Fair Access to Care, it is an important consideration in determining the number of people deemed to be FACS critical.
The next step is to estimate the number of FACS critical individuals reporting difficulty with four or more ADLs. This is done using the information in table 1 of the Impact Assessment, and is explained in detail in the responses I gave to him on 14 December 2009, Official Report, columns 762-3W.
Hospital Beds: East of England
Mr. Ruffley: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many acute hospital beds there were per head of population in (a) the former Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire strategic health authority area, (b) the East of England strategic health authority area, (c) the former Suffolk west primary care trust area and (d) Suffolk primary care trust area in each relevant year since 1997. [314886]
Phil Hope: Information is not available in the format requested. The following table shows the average daily number of available acute beds per 100,000 population, for the period 2002-03 to 2008-09 for the former Norfolk Suffolk and Cambridgeshire Strategic Health Authority (SHA), the East of England SHA which was created on 1 October 2006, following the merger of three previous SHA (Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire SHA, Essex SHA and Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire SHA), the former Suffolk West PCT and Suffolk Primary Care Trust (PCT).
| Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire SHA | East of England SHA | Suffolk West PCT | Suffolk PCT | |
| (1) Denotes zero Notes: 1. Due to SHA reconfigurations, data from prior to 2002-03 are not available at SHA level. 2 Suffolk West PCT only provided acute beds in 2002-03. They subsequently provided geriatric beds. 3 Suffolk West PCT was formed at the start of 2002-03 from Bury St Edmonds PCT. The old organisation did not provide any beds. 4. Suffolk PCT was formed in October 2006 from the merger of Suffolk Coastal PCT, Ipswich PCT, Central Suffolk PCT and Suffolk West PCT. Suffolk PCT does not provide any acute beds. 5. Figures may have altered slightly from the answer to earlier PQs as the table has been updated using the revised population statistics issued by the Office of National Statistics. Source: Department of Health form KH03 and Office for National Statistics for population data. | ||||
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