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www.ic.nhs.uk/pubs

All ambulance trusts are required to meet the same national response time standards. Category A calls (those presenting conditions that may be immediately life threatening) should be responded to within eight minutes in 75 per cent. of cases and category B calls (those conditions that are serious but not immediately life threatening) should be responded to within 19 minutes in 95 per cent. of cases.

The Department only collects national data at ambulance trust level, with strategic health authorities as the local headquarters of the NHS, and primary care trusts as commissioners, having the responsibility for ensuring that national response time standards are delivered and maintained by trusts. This may mean that trusts locally will look at performance data below ambulance trust level, but whether and how the NHS does this is for each region to decide and manage locally.

Ambulance Services: Standards

Mr. Vara: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he made of the number of patients in (a) North West Cambridgeshire constituency, (b) the Cambridgeshire Primary Care Trust area, (c) the Peterborough Primary Care Trust area and (d) England who were attended to within (i) 10, (ii) 30, (iii) 60 and (iv) 120 minutes of requesting an ambulance in each of the last five years. [324596]

Mr. Mike O'Brien: The Department does not collect response time data of ambulance services in the format requested, and has therefore not made an estimate of the number of patients who were attended within 10, 30, 60 and 120 minutes of requesting an ambulance.

The data that the Department does collect on ambulance response time are in accordance with the national response time targets and these are published on an annual basis
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in the statistical bulletin, Ambulance Services, England. These documents have already been placed in the Library and on the Information for health and social care website at:

www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/audits-and-performance/ambulance

Arthritis: Drugs

Mr. Stephen O'Brien: To ask the Secretary of State for Health pursuant to the answer of 18 March 2010, Official Report, column 966W, on arthritis: drugs, to which areas of Government policy his letter to the Prime Minister related. [324090]

Mr. Mike O'Brien: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave on 18 March 2010, Official Report, column 966W.

Asthma: Greater London

Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what estimate he has made of the number of people in each age group (a) with, (b) diagnosed with, (c) admitted to hospital as a result of, (d) treated by a GP as a result of and (e) who died as a result of asthma in each London borough in each year since 2000. [323738]

Ann Keen: Information is not available in the format requested.

Figures are available for the number of people registered with asthma in the Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF), introduced as part of the new General Medical Services contract on 1 April 2004. QOF data are available from 2004-05 and information has been provided broken
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down by primary care trust (PCT) of responsibility. The QOF disease register reporting does not collect information on ages, so the data is not split by age group.

We have provided a count of finished admission episodes where the primary diagnosis was asthma by age group and by PCT of residence in London for the years 2000-01 to 2008-09.

Information on the number of people treated by a general practitioner as a result of asthma, is not collected centrally.

Information is provided from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on the number of deaths where asthma was the underlying cause of death for persons in each age group in each London borough, for the years 2000-08 (the latest year available) combined. The number of deaths at this level of detail is extremely small. Consequently, figures for individual years have not been provided, in line with ONS policy on protecting confidentiality within birth and death statistics.

The information available has been placed in the Library.

Justine Greening: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether he has made an estimate of the (a) number of units of medication prescribed to treat asthma-related conditions and (b) bed days were occupied as a result of asthma in each London borough in each year since 2000. [323739]

Ann Keen: Information is not collected in the format requested. The following tables show the number of items prescribed for asthma-related conditions in London primary care trusts (PCTs) from 2006 to 2009 and the number of finished consultant episode bed days where the primary diagnosis was asthma, given by PCT of residence in London for the years 2000-01 to 2008-09.

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Items prescribed for asthma-related conditions in London 2006-09
	Items
PCT	2006	2007	2008	2009( 1)
Barking and Dagenham	127,193	130,402	134,237	102,722
Barnet	177,622	179,357	181,923	136,527
Bexley Care Trust	136,886	140,623	139,635	105,148
Brent Teaching	150,734	155,158	159,531	119,541
Bromley	174,199	174,441	176,350	131,643
Camden	97,679	96,328	99,515	74,481
City and Hackney Teaching	114,129	115,961	115,826	86,550
Croydon	187,823	191,036	196,150	146,878
Ealing	181,177	184,038	184,875	140,683
Enfield	159,942	160,070	165,812	125,442
Greenwich Teaching	165,457	163,219	165,706	125,681
Hammersmith and Fulham	84,273	87,006	86,142	65,544
Haringey Teaching	134,218	137,599	137,925	104,639
Harrow	139,146	143,961	147,964	110,496
Havering	156,823	168,798	178,363	136,048
Hillingdon	154,110	155,412	158,362	118,883
Hounslow	131,948	137,549	138,866	105,842
Islington	111,872	114,330	118,999	89,951
Kensington and Chelsea	65,167	67,858	67,850	51,952
Kingston	93,560	94,220	95,133	70,913
Lambeth	144,873	143,794	148,327	110,021
Lewisham	160,751	162,154	162,727	122,167
Newham	174,827	178,654	187,437	145,500
Redbridge	130,595	133,845	137,194	105,240
Richmond and Twickenham	90,861	92,054	95,092	72,145
Southwark	138,791	141,913	143,623	107,918
Sutton and Merton	212,941	221,283	230,477	172,680
Tower Hamlets	126,113	126,929	128,528	97,768
Waltham Forest	134,323	137,058	139,595	106,985
Wandsworth Teaching	149,320	148,156	146,639	112,369
Westminster	86,734	91,214	93,804	72,086
Total	4,294,087	4,374,420	4,462,607	3,374,443
(1 )January to September. Notes: 1. The PACT system covers prescriptions prescribed by general practitioners (GPs), nurses, pharmacists and others in England and dispensed in the community in the United Kingdom. For data at PCT level, prescriptions written by a prescriber located in a particular PCT but dispensed outside that PCT will be included in the PCT in which the prescriber is based. Prescriptions written in England but dispensed outside England are included. Prescriptions written in hospitals/clinics that are dispensed in the community, prescriptions dispensed in hospitals, dental prescribing and private prescriptions are not included in PACT data. It is important to note this as some British National Formulary (BNF) sections have a high proportion of prescriptions written in hospitals that are dispensed in the community. For example, BNF chapter 4, "Central Nervous System" has a fair proportion of items written in mental health clinics that are dispensed in the community-these prescriptions are not included in PACT data. 2. Data are held for 60 months and so at the moment the only complete years available are 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009. Complete data for 2009 cannot be released until after the publication of the associated National Statistic in April 2010 and so only data for January to September is presented here. 3. Prescriptions are written on a prescription form known as a FP10. Each single item written on the form is counted as a prescription item. 4. The term "asthma-related conditions" has been taken to mean asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease since they are treated with the same medications, namely those classified under sections 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3 of the BNF. Source: Prescribing Analysis and CosT (PACT) system.

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