Lactose: Allergies
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will estimate the number of people with lactose intolerance. [127804]
Anna Soubry: The Food Standards Agency advise that in the United Kingdom, lactose intolerance is more prevalent in adults than in children. About 5% of the UK adult population are lactose intolerant, and the prevalence among some ethnic groups is higher than this.
Malaria
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people have been recorded by the NHS as having developed malaria following an overseas visit in each of the last five years. [127677]
Anna Soubry: The data on recorded cases of malaria in United Kingdom residents who have travelled abroad is found in the following table and has been provided by the Health Protection Agency.
| Malaria cases in UK residents who have travelled abroad | |
| Travelled abroad from UK | |
Mental Health Services: East of England
Mr Bellingham: To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will make it his policy that additional funding should be allocated to the NHS in Norfolk and Suffolk for the purpose of hiring private mental health beds in case of need. [127898]
Norman Lamb: Allocations for national health service services are currently made by the Department to primary care trusts (PCTs). Each PCT decides how it then allocates resources locally.
The hon. Member may wish to approach the PCTs in Norfolk and Suffolk for details of how adequate provision of mental health beds for their population has been ensured.
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From 2013 resources will be allocated to clinical commissioning groups and will be a matter for the NHS Commissioning Board.
Methamphetamine
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) what steps his Department is taking to highlight the dangers of methamphetamine use; [127672]
(2) what recent estimate he has made of the cost to the NHS of treating users of methamphetamine. [127673]
Anna Soubry: FRANK, the Government's drugs information and advice service, includes information on the risks of the use of methamphetamine. The Department obtains expert medical advice to ensure that the information on FRANK is as accurate and up to date as possible.
Information on the effects of methamphetamine use, as well as other illicit and licit substances, is contained in the document published by the Department in August 2011: ‘A summary of the health harms of drugs: A guide to the risks and harms associated with substance misuse’. A copy of this document has already been placed in the Library.
Data on the cost of treating users of individual drugs, such as methamphetamine, are not centrally collected.
NHS: Staff
Dr Offord: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many (a) doctors and (b) managers were employed by the NHS in England in May (a) 2010 and (b) 2012. [128076]
Dr Poulter: The monthly workforce statistics published by the Health and Social Care Information Centre show that there were 97,729 full-time equivalent doctors and 42,267 full-time equivalent managers employed by the national health service in England in May 2010. In May 2012 there were 101,205 doctors, an increase of 3,476 (3.6%) and 35,596 managers, a decrease of 6,671 (15.8%) employed by the NHS in England.
Obesity
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) with reference to his report entitled Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A call to action on obesity in England, published in October 2011, what progress has been made on the level of excess weight in children and excess weight averaged across all adults by 2020; [127603]
(2) what proportion of (a) men and (b) women are considered (i) obese and (ii) overweight. [127836]
Anna Soubry: Figures are not yet available to indicate what progress has been made on the levels of excess weight in children and adults since the publication of ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A call to action on obesity in England’.
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Data on the prevalence of overweight and obesity are published annually by the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The latest data available are for 2010 and are provided in the following table. Data for 2011 are due to be published in December.
| 2010 | ||
| Percentage | ||
| Overweight | Obese | |
| Source: Health Survey for England—2010: Trend tables, Health and Social Care Information Centre. | ||
A copy of ‘Healthy Lives, Healthy People: A call to action on obesity in England’ has already been placed in the Library.
Patients: Hygiene
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how much has been spent by the NHS on educating patients in hospitals to wash their hands regularly and correctly in the latest period for which figures are available. [127676]
Dr Poulter: National health service organisations are now responsible for deciding how to spend their budgets on local activity on hand hygiene. Information on how much these organisations have spent on educating patients on hand hygiene is not held centrally.
The Department funded the National Patient Safety Agency to provide an initiative called “Cleanyourhands”, which ran from 2009 until 2011. The “Cleanyourhands” campaign was a national initiative in England and Wales, which aimed to improve the hand hygiene of health care staff and help reduce the spread of preventable health care associated infections. The cost of the campaign for both patients and the workforce in health care setting is broken down in total by years as follows:
| Cost of campaign (£) | |
Perinatal Mortality
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what (a) financial assistance and (b) other support is available from the NHS for mothers who deliver a stillborn baby. [127840]
Dr Poulter: The national health service does not provide financial assistance to those who have experienced a stillbirth, but many hospitals have care and support mechanisms in place to support mothers and families who experience stillbirth.
NHS maternity care providers need to ensure they have comprehensive, culturally sensitive, multidisciplinary policies, services and facilities for the care and support of women and their families who have experienced stillbirth. This includes a dedicated bereavement coordinator, usually a specialist midwife, providing information relating to birth and death registration, counselling services and signposting to other local support.
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Many hospitals arrange a regular service of remembrance for all babies who die in pregnancy, at birth or in infancy. All hospitals will offer to arrange a funeral, burial or cremation free of charge.
Prescriptions: Fees and Charges
Mr Byrne: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many people qualify for free prescriptions. [128310]
Norman Lamb: In England, 94.6% of prescription items were not charged for at the point of dispensing in the community in 2011. The majority of these items are prescribed to people who are exempt from prescription charges, but it also includes items dispensed to patients possessing a prescription pre-payment certificate.
There are no official consistent data on all the groups of people who are eligible for exemption from prescription charges. However, we estimate the number of eligible people in England to be in the region of 32 million to 36 million.
Psychiatry
Diana Johnson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what assessment his Department has made of the case for introducing a mandatory licensing scheme for psychotherapists. [128315]
Dr Poulter: The Government's view is that any assessment of the case for mandatory statutory regulation of psychotherapists, will only take place in light of the experience of assured voluntary registration.
The Health and Social Care Act 2012 provides for the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence, which is to be renamed the Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA), to quality assure voluntary registers of unregulated health care professionals and health care workers in the United Kingdom, social care workers in England, and certain students.
This will allow employers and people who use services to assure themselves that the practitioners they appoint or contract with meet appropriate standards of education, conduct and competence, and apply high ethical standards to their work, without placing an undue regulatory burden on practitioners or taxpayers. Only those registers, which meet the standards set by the PSA, will be able to be accredited.
A number of organisations including ones relevant to psychotherapy have already expressed their interest to the Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence in becoming accredited voluntary registers.
Respiratory System
Mr Allen: To ask the Secretary of State for Health whether there will be a dedicated national clinical lead for respiratory disease in the NHS. [127798]
Anna Soubry: It is for the NHS Commissioning Board to determine how it will structure national clinical leadership and advice within the Board. Further announcements on staffing structures within the Board are to be made shortly.
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Samaritans
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health what funding his Department has provided to the Samaritans in each of the last five years. [127599]
Norman Lamb: The Department can confirm that funding of £17,328 was provided to the Samaritans in 2011-12 for the Suicide Prevention Call to Action project. No funding was provided in the years 2008-09 to 2010-11.
No funding has been provided to the Samaritans in the current financial year (2012-13). However additional funding could be allocated in the remaining months of the financial year.
Tuberculosis
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health which local authority areas have the 20 highest incidences of tuberculosis; and if he will make a statement. [127803]
Anna Soubry: The information requested is shown in the following table.
| Three-year average tuberculosis case report, rates (2009-11) and proportion of culture confirmed cases (2011) by selected local authority | |
| Local authority | Average number of cases 2009-11 |
| Notes: 1. Numbers may vary substantially year on year just by chance because the numbers per year are often small in local authorities. For this reason, three-year average numbers are provided. Small numbers can result in deductive disclosure. 2. The local authorities presented have the 20 highest average incidence rates (2009 to 2011). 3. Rates calculated using middle year ONS mid-year population estimates (2010). 4. Data as at June 2012. Source: Enhanced Tuberculosis Surveillance. Office for National Statistics mid-year population estimates. | |
Viagra: Side Effects
Ms Abbott: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many men have been admitted to hospital as a result of taking Sildenafil in each of the last five years. [127707]
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Norman Lamb: This information is not recorded centrally by the national health service. However, reports of suspected adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are collected by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and Commission for Human Medicines through the spontaneous reporting scheme, the Yellow Card Scheme. The scheme collects suspected ADR reports from the whole United Kingdom in relation to all medicines, including those which are prescription only, over-the-counter or available from general retail sales outlets, and medicines which are unlicensed.
On a Yellow Card the reporter has the option to select whether the adverse reaction resulted in hospitalisation or prolonged hospitalisation of the patient. The following table provides a breakdown of all UK spontaneous suspected ADR reports received in the past five years associated with the drug substance sildenafil where the patient gender has been provided as male (or is not specified), and the reporter has stated that the suspected side effect resulted in hospitalisation or prolonged, hospitalisation of the patient.
| Number of reports | ||
| Year of receipt | Male patients | Gender not specified |
It should be noted that information relating to hospitalisation is not mandatory and is therefore not always captured in an ADR report. This means that the number provided does not correspond to the total number of men admitted to hospital as a result of taking sildenafil in the last five years, only those reported to the MHRA.
It should also be noted that health care professionals are asked to report suspected adverse reactions on a voluntary basis and the submission of a report does not mean that the reaction cited was definitely caused by the medicine. Many factors have to be taken into account in assessing causal relationships including temporal association, the possible contribution of concomitant medication and the underlying disease being treated.
The number of reports received via the Yellow Card scheme does not directly equate to the number of people who suffer adverse reactions to medicines in the general population as this scheme is associated with an unknown level of under-reporting.
Window Blinds: Accidents
Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many children under the age of three (1) in the London Borough of Havering have died as a result of becoming entangled in window blind cords since 2008; [128320]
(2) have died as a result of becoming entangled in window blind cords since 2008. [128321]
Mr Hurd: I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Cabinet Office.
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The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.
Letter from Glen Watson, dated November 2012:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your recent question asking (a) how many children under the age of three in the London Borough of Havering have died as a result of becoming entangled in window blind cords since 2008 and (b) how many children under the age of three have died as a result of becoming entangled in window blind cords since 2008. (PQ128320 and PQ128321).
The table below shows the number of children under the age of three years who are currently registered as having died as a result of being entangled in window blind cords in England and Wales, for each year between 2008 and 2011 (latest year available). There were no deaths involving window blind cords in the London Borough of Havering(1).
| Number of children under the age of three years who died as a result of becoming entangled in window blind cords, England and Wales, 2008-11(1, 2, 3) | |
| England and Wales | Number of children |
| (1 )Other accidental hanging and strangulation was defined using the International Classification of Diseases Tenth Revision (ICD-10) code W74, then searching the text accompanying the death certificate to determine if cause of death involved being entangled in window blind cords. (2 )Figures are for deaths registered in each calendar year. (3 )Figures for England and Wales include deaths of non-residents. Source: Office for National Statistics | |
Cabinet Office
Civil Service Agencies
Michael Connarty: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office (1) what his policy is on executive agencies competing against private companies for (a) public and (b) private sector contracts; [127701]
(2) what his policy is on executive agencies competing against UK private sector companies for overseas contracts; [127702]
(3) if he will publish the rules and procedures in place to stop executive agencies using information gained during the performance of statutory functions that would give them a commercial advantage when bidding for commercial contracts. [127703]
Miss Chloe Smith: As set out in the Open Public Services White Paper, the Government believes that public services should be delivered by a diverse range of providers from the public, private and voluntary sectors, as well as by new organisations such as mutuals. In some instances, this could result in Executive Agencies competing in the market for domestic and overseas contracts. Any Executive Agency bidding for contracts will need to abide by the principles set out in Managing Public Money, as well as its obligations under procurement and competition law, including not using information inappropriately in order to gain a commercial advantage.
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Death
Patrick Mercer: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office when the Office for National Statistics (ONS) plans to publish its analyses on registration delays for each grouping of causes-of-death in ONS's full short-cause list; and if the ONS will present its analysis per short-cause for different age-groups at death for the purpose of monitoring and reducing premature mortality. [128336]
Mr Hurd: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.
Letter from Glen Watson, dated November 2012:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your recent question.
A short guidance paper on the Impact of Registration Delays on Mortality Statistics in 2011 was published alongside the annual Mortality Statistics: Deaths registered in England and Wales (Series DR), 2011 on the 6 November 2012 and is available here:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/user-guidance/health-and-life-events/impact-of-registration-delays-on-mortality-statistics--2011.html
Figures presented include the median registration period for the ONS short list of cause of death codes for all deaths registered in England and Wales in 2011. Figures are not presented by age group.
The number of deaths registered in England and Wales each year by sex, age, cause, marital status and place of death are published annually and are available here:
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/all-releases.html?definition=tcm%3A77-27475
Employment: Scotland
Cathy Jamieson: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office how many people in (a) Scotland and (b) Kilmarnock and Loudon constituency, who were included in the numbers of employed in the most recent Labour Market Statistics, were participants in the Work programme. [128260]
Mr Hurd: The information requested falls within the responsibility of the UK Statistics Authority. I have asked the authority to reply.
Letter from Glen Watson, dated November 2012:
As Director General for the Office for National Statistics, I have been asked to reply to your Parliamentary Question.
The requested information is not available.
The ONS collects information on people participating in the various kinds of government-supported training and employment programmes via the quarterly Labour Force Survey, which is the source used for the most recent Labour Market Statistics. However, estimates for Scotland and for areas within Scotland are not sufficiently reliable due to the relatively small sample size involved.
Justice and Security Bill (HL)
Jesse Norman: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what representations he has received relating to Part 2 of the Justice and Security Bill [Lords]. [127923]
Mr Kenneth Clarke: I have been asked to reply as the Minister responsible for the Justice and Security Bill which is shortly due to enter its Report stage in the other place.
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I, and my officials, have corresponded with and met a wide range of stakeholders who are interested in Part 2 of the Bill. This includes fellow parliamentarians, representatives of lobby groups, and a number of legal and intelligence experts. In addition to this, we have also received a number of publicly-available reports on the provisions contained in this part of the Bill. As with the responses received during the consultation on the Justice and Security Green Paper which preceded the Bill, I and my officials are considering all representations very carefully.
I would be very happy to meet with the hon. Gentleman in order to discuss these representations further.
Military Medals Review
Nicola Blackwood: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what recent progress has been made by the Independent Medals Review Panel on rules governing the award of campaign medals, including a Bomber Command campaign medal; and whether the Panel will be submitting its final report before the end of 2012. [128161]
Julie Hilling: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office (1) whether the second stage of the Military Medals Review will review the policy on medals in other countries; [128206]
(2) whether the second stage of the Military Medals Review will be concluded this autumn; and whether it will be published before the end of the year. [128298]
Mr Hurd: Sir John Holmes GCVO KBE CMG has made good progress on the further work he was invited to undertake to implement the recommendations set out in his Military Medals Review, published on 17 July 2012. This involves a number of stages, including a fresh look at the policy on the acceptance of medals from other countries.
The first phase of the further work has now been completed, covering a number of Campaign Medals, and has been submitted for consideration.
Procurement
Jon Trickett: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office what criteria his Department used to judge tenders for the last 100 contracts valued over £100,000. [128249]
Mr Hurd: As part of my Department's transparency drive, since January 2011 all contract opportunities with central Government with an estimated value of £10,000 or more (including the Invitation to Tender or Quote, which outline the evaluation criteria employed) have been published on the Contracts Finder website.
Sir Edward Heath
Mr Watson: To ask the Minister for the Cabinet Office pursuant to the answer of 29 October 2012, Official Report, column 52W, on Sir Edward Heath, if he will publish a description of the contents for each of the 71 files and 67 extracts from the PREM 15 series that have been retained by the Cabinet Office. [127155]
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Mr Hurd [holding answer 7 November 2012]: The material retained from the PREM 15 series is retained on security or other specified grounds as described in the “Access to public records' guidance published by The National Archives:
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http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/documents/information-management/access-to-public-records.pdf
It is not possible to provide more detailed descriptions of the retained material without incurring disproportionate costs.