Written questions by Evans.

With reference to p.98 of the document entitled Fit for the future: 10 Year Health Plan for England, published on 3 July 2025, if he will list the training requirements identified as (a) irritating staff and (b) adding unnecessary burdens staff's working days.

The 10-Year Health Plan set out an action to review the amount of statutory and mandatory training that healthcare professionals are required to undertake. This follows a large national engagement exercise with members of the public and health and care staff. As part of this engagement, members of staff shared their poor experiences of mandatory training, citing that the training can be, repetitive or irrelevant to their role and takes them away from treating patients.The exact amount of statutory and mandatory training completed varies, depending on which organisation they work for, their role or roles, and the frequency of their movement between organisations, for instance resident doctors rotating between organisations may have to repeat some of the training.On average, it is estimated that nationally defined statutory and mandatory training takes up to eight hours or one day per person per year, and locally mandated training will add to this. This considerable investment of time must be balanced against the fact that this training is both important, for instance safety training and emergency preparedness training, and often required by law.

Whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the recovery pathways for the care of patients who have had a sudden cardiac arrest not related to myocardial infarction.

A cardiac arrest is caused by a dangerous abnormal heart rhythm, which occurs when the heart isn’t working properly and causes the heart to stop beating. Each year approximately 30,000 people receive resuscitation for an out of hospital cardiac arrest in the United Kingdom.Only one in 10 people that have a cardiac arrest survive to go home from hospital. Fast and effective action will help save the lives of people suffering a cardiac arrest, as the chances of survival from a cardiac arrest that occurs out of hospital doubles if the person receives immediate resuscitation or a high energy shock to the heart, known as defibrillation.The National Health Service committed to improving community first response and building defibrillator networks to help save 4,000 lives by 2028. This is being supported by educating the general public, including young people of school age, about how to recognise and respond to an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.NHS England is also working with partners such as the British Heart Foundation (BHF) to harness new technology and ensure the public and emergency services are able to rapidly locate this life saving equipment in an emergency.Patients who survive cardiac arrest and their families are supported through referral to local NHS services, and this will include rehabilitation such as cardiac and neurological rehabilitation and mental health services for psychological support.There are different pathways for cardiac arrest survivors, depending on the severity of the damage caused by the cardiac arrest. For people being discharged from secondary care and those with ischemic heart disease, myocardial infarction, cardiac rehabilitation services are available in every region.In December 2024, to support local systems to commission high quality cardiac rehabilitation, NHS England published Commissioning standards for cardiac rehabilitation, which is available at the following link:https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/commissioning-standards-for-cardiovascular-rehabilitation/These standards of care complement the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation’s Standards and Core Components document, published in 2023, to support the delivery of high-quality care and adherence to evidenced-based practice. Further information on the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation’s Standards and Core Components document is available at the following link:https://static1.squarespace.com/static/66cc563eecc7a22020c7da6c/t/66ffa8f20aef5d0b272c6b0e/1728030962905/BACPR+Standards+and+Core+Components+2023.pdfThe national audit for cardiac rehabilitation assesses practices against these standards of care and publishes the results annually, with the 2024 report available at the following link:https://www.cardiacrehabilitation.org.uk/site/docs/NCP_CR%20Certification_Report_2024_Final.pdfNHS England is committed to improving support for cardiac arrest survivor. NHS England has provided additional funding to all ICBs to increase the provision of cardiac rehabilitation across England, where clinically indicated patients can access cardiac rehabilitation following cardiac arrest.For patients with more complex needs it may be appropriate for them to be referred to Level 1 or 2 inpatient specialist services for short term post-acute rehabilitation, which may be followed by specialist rehabilitation in the community as appropriate.Patients and their families may also be signposted to appropriate charities such as the BHF’s Cardiac arrest webpage and the Sudden Cardiac Arrest UK’s website, with further information available on both, respectively, at the following two links:https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/conditions/cardiac-arresthttps://suddencardiacarrestuk.org/

With reference to the 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future, published on 3 July 2025, what steps he plans to take to ensure that people who need one will be able to get a same-day GP appointment.

Through our 10-Year Health Plan, it will be easier and faster to see a general practitioner (GP). The 8:00am scramble will end, we will train more doctors, and we will guarantee digital consultations within 24 hours. We have delivered the biggest boost to GP funding in years, an £889 million uplift, with GPs now receiving a growing share of National Health Service resources In October 2024, we invested £82 million into the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme to support the recruitment of 1,900 individual GPs into primary care networks across England, which has expanded capacity, and will help to make same-day appointments more available to the patients that need them. The new £102 million Primary Care Utilisation and Modernisation Fund will create additional clinical space within over 1,000 practices across England, enabling more appointments and supporting same-day access.

What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the information sharing duties in the (a) Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and (b) Crime and Policing Bill on GPs.

The Government is committed to improving information sharing across services to help safeguard and promote the welfare of children. The Department of Health and Social Care is working closely with the Department for Education and the Home Office on their respective information sharing proposals, which are included in Department for Education’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the Home Office’s Crime and Policing Bill. The information sharing proposals aim to establish a clear and consistent process to share information. To support the formulation and test the feasibility of these proposals, we have engaged with health stakeholders, including general practitioners, though a variety of forums. We will continue to engage with health stakeholders as we plan for the effective implementation of the use of the single unique identifier, the information sharing duty, and the child sexual abuse mandatory reporting duty. The Department for Education has published an impact assessment on the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/childrens-wellbeing-and-schools-bill-impact-assessmentsThe Home Office and the Ministry of Justice have published an impact assessment on the Crime and Policing Bill, which is available at the following link:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/crime-and-policing-bill-2025-impact-assessmentsWe will continue to support the departments leading on the respective bills to review and update these documents, once the bills have completed their passages through the House of Lords.

With reference to 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future, published on 3 July 2025, if he will publish a list of regulatory bodies he plans to merge or abolish.

The 10 Year Health Plan refers to bodies that are being abolished or merged. None of these are regulatory bodies, such as the Care Quality Commission, instead they perform other functions.As part of the 10 Year Health Plan, we are cutting the number of organisations, bodies and entities overwhelming the National Health Service system and taking focus away from basics of patient care.The changes we are making will improve quality and safety by making it clear where responsibility and accountability sits at all levels of the system, and making it easier for staff, patients, and users to directly feed into the system to improve quality of care.However, the 10 Year Health Plan and the Dash Review detail several other organisations that are planned to be abolished or have their functions transferred. These organisations are mentioned in the relevant publications and there are no additional plans to publish a list. The organisations which are impacted are:- NHS England;- the Health Services Safety Investigations Body;- the National Guardian’s Office;- Healthwatch England;- local Healthwatch organisations; and- Commissioning Support Units.

Whether the underspend in the additional roles reimbursement scheme has been reallocated.

The table attached provides a funding and spending summary for the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme, from 2019/20 to 2024/25.

With reference to 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future, published 3 July 2025, how the planned multi-neighbourhood providers covering large geographical areas will improve local continuity of healthcare.

The 10 Year Health Plan sets out our vision for a Neighbourhood Health Service that moves care closer to home. The Neighbourhood Health Service will embody our new preventative principle that care should happen as locally as it can, digitally by default, in a patient’s home if possible, in a neighbourhood health centre when needed, and only in a hospital if necessary.We will bring together teams of professionals closer to people’s home, including nurses, doctors, social care workers, pharmacists, health visitors, and more, to work together to provide comprehensive care in the community and improve local continuity of healthcare. We expect neighbourhood teams and services to be designed in a way that meets the needs of local populations.Multi-neighbourhood providers will facilitate the development of neighbourhood teams, improving access for local populations and supporting the continuity of care for patients in a Neighbourhood Health Service. These providers will cover populations of approximately 250,000 people, to unlock the advantages and efficiencies possible from greater scale, working across all general practices and small neighbourhood providers in their footprint. The introduction of the Single Patient Record will support this way of working, giving neighbourhood clinicians secure access to a patient’s medical records to ensure seamless care across services.

What the underspend was in the additional roles reimbursement scheme in each year since it was launched.

The table attached provides a funding and spending summary for the Additional Roles Reimbursement Scheme, from 2019/20 to 2024/25.

Whether the (a) cost of abolishing NHS England and (b) resulting redundancy package will be paid for from his Department’s settlement at the Spending Review 2025.

We have recently announced the Spending Review settlement, which provides an additional £29 billion of annual day-to-day spending in real terms by 2028/2029 compared to 2023/2024. Ahead of asking the National Health Service to commence a multi-year planning round, we are now carefully reviewing how the settlement is prioritised, including making provision for redundancy costs. At this stage, it is too early to say what the upfront costs of integration are, including any redundancy, while transition planning is ongoing.While there will be some upfront costs, we expect the reform to eliminate duplication and drive a smaller centre, based in a single organisation, that will generate significant savings in the long run, which can be diverted to the front line.

With reference to his Department's policy paper entitled 10 Year Health Plan for England: fit for the future, published on 3 July 2025, if he will publish his Department’s assumptions of NHS productivity increases for the reduction in projected staff numbers in 2035 compared to the 2023 Long-Term Workforce Plan.

We will publish our 10 Year Workforce Plan by the end of this year. The plan will set out the workforce needed to deliver the transformed service, and the key assumptions used in determining that workforce. That plan will set out assumptions about productivity used in determining projected staff numbers.The approach set out in our 10-Year Health plan means that we will need a very different kind of workforce strategy. Instead of asking ‘how many staff do we need to maintain our current care model over the next 10 years?’, our new 10 Year Workforce Plan will ask ‘given our reform plan, what workforce do we need, what should they do, where should they be deployed, and what skills should they have?’

When his Department expects NHS England to publish updated guidance on children's and young people's eating disorders; and which third party bodies were consulted on updates to that guidance.

NHS England is in the process of refreshing its guidance on children and young people's eating disorders, which includes increasing the focus on early identification and intervention across the care pathway, including in settings such as schools and primary care. The guidance focuses on community provision of care, whilst ensuring swift access to specialist support as soon as an eating disorder is suspected. It is not yet known when the updated guidance will be published. The updated guidance is being produced in partnership with a task and finish group comprising of internal and external clinical, academic, and policy stakeholders, including from royal colleges, regional and system children and young people and eating disorder leads and children, young people, and parents with lived experience.

What steps he is taking to ensure that updates made to NHS England guidance help inform the NHS 10 Year Health Plan; and which stakeholders in the eating disorders sector have provided views in his Department's consultation processes.

The 10-Year Health Plan was developed jointly between the Department and NHS England. All relevant NHS England guidance has been considered as part of the development of the plan.We received 1,650 submissions to the 10-Year Health Plan from partner organisations. This included responses from the Faculty of Eating Disorders and BEAT, the eating disorder charity. We also received responses from 120 mental health organisations who may have an interest in eating disorders. However, this information is not held in a format that allows this interest to be identified separately.

Whether he has had discussions with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on reducing overprescribing.

I have discussed with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) concerns raised by Members of Parliament about the adverse effects of antidepressant prescribing, and what the MHRA can do to improve communication on the risks of different medicines.

Whether his Department plans to publish a national carers strategy.

The Government is committed to ensuring that families have the support that they need. The Government has heard the calls for a National Carers Strategy. This must be addressed in the wider context of the urgent need for a renewed vision for adult social care.We have launched an independent commission into adult social care as part of our critical first steps towards delivering a National Care Service. The commission will start a national conversation about what care and support working age adults, older people, and their families expect from adult social care, including exploring the needs of unpaid carers, who provide vital care and support.I also chair a cross-Government meeting, made up of ministers from the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Business and Trade, and the Department for Education, to consider how we can provide unpaid carers with the recognition and support they deserve.

What steps he is taking to improve the quality of dementia diagnosis data.

To support recovery of the dementia diagnosis rates and implementation of the Dementia Care Pathway, we have developed a memory service dashboard for management information purposes. The aim is to support commissioners and providers with appropriate data and enable targeted support where needed. Commissioned by the Healthcare Quality Improvement Partnership and funded by NHS England and the Welsh administration, the National Audit of Dementia Memory Service Spotlight reports include data on aspects of the diagnostic process, including waiting times and variation in service delivery in terms of diagnosis speed, neuroimaging use, and post-diagnostic support. The aim is to aid commissioners and providers in planning and targeting improvement where appropriate. To enhance dementia diagnosis rate data further, dementia sub types have been included in the Core GP Contract data collection from April 2023 onwards. This plays an important role in improving diagnosis accuracy and care planning, enabling clinicians to refine diagnostic criteria and tailor treatments more effectively.To help address and reduce variation in dementia diagnosis rates, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities’ Dementia Intelligence Network developed a data tool for local systems, which includes an assessment of population characteristics such as rurality and socio-economic deprivation. This enables systems to investigate local variation in diagnosis and take informed action to enhance their diagnosis rates.

Whether he has carried out an impact assessment for the removal of the dementia diagnosis target from NHS planning guidance.

The Government remains committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to the national ambition of 66.7% and agrees that timely diagnosis is vital to ensure that people with dementia can access the treatment and support they need. The Darzi Investigation found that there were too many targets set for the National Health Service, which made it hard for local systems to prioritise their actions or to be held properly accountable. This is why we have taken a new approach to NHS Planning Guidance this year, reducing the number of national directives from 32 to 18. We will only turn the NHS around by doing things differently. These are the first steps on our journey for long-term reform of the NHS. NHS Planning Guidance is not an exhaustive list of everything the NHS does, and the absence of a target does not mean it is not an area of focus.

If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of amending the NHS 2025/26 priorities and operational planning guidance to include a target on dementia diagnosis.

The Government remains committed to recovering the dementia diagnosis rate to the national ambition of 66.7% and agrees that timely diagnosis is vital to ensure that people with dementia can access the treatment and support they need. The Darzi Investigation found that there were too many targets set for the National Health Service, which made it hard for local systems to prioritise their actions or to be held properly accountable. This is why we have taken a new approach to NHS Planning Guidance this year, reducing the number of national directives from 32 to 18. We will only turn the NHS around by doing things differently. These are the first steps on our journey for long-term reform of the NHS. NHS Planning Guidance is not an exhaustive list of everything the NHS does, and the absence of a target does not mean it is not an area of focus.

Whether his Department plans to publish a dementia strategy.

The Government wants a society where every person with dementia receives high-quality, compassionate care from diagnosis through to the end of life.The 10-Year Health Plan will address the challenges diagnosed by Lord Darzi in his independent investigation into the National Health Service in England, and will set the vision for what good joined-up care looks like for people with a combination of complex health and care needs, including people living with dementia. We are carefully considering policies, including those that impact people with dementia, with input from the public, patients, health staff, and our partners, as we develop the plan.As part of this work, we will consider how best to meet the needs of people with dementia, including whether it is appropriate to develop a dementia strategy.

Whether he has made an assessment of the adequacy of the recovery pathways for the care of sudden cardiac arrest survivors.

In December 2024, to support local systems to commission high quality cardiac rehabilitation, NHS England published the document, Commissioning standards for cardiac rehabilitation, which is available at the following link:https://www.england.nhs.uk/long-read/commissioning-standards-for-cardiovascular-rehabilitation/These standards of care complement the British Association of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation’s Standards and Core Components document, published in 2023, to support the delivery of high-quality care and adherence to evidenced-based practice.The NHS Long Term Plan committed to improve community first response and build defibrillator networks to help save 4,000 lives by 2028. This is being supported by educating the public, including young people of school age, about how to recognise and respond to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.NHS England is also working with partners such as the British Heart Foundation to harness new technology and ensure the public and emergency services can rapidly locate this life saving equipment in an emergency.Patients who survive cardiac arrest and their families are supported through referral to local services within the National Health Service; this will include rehabilitation such as cardiac and neurological rehabilitation and mental health services for psychological support.There are different pathways for cardiac arrest survivors, depending on the severity of the damage caused by the cardiac arrest. For people being discharged from secondary care and those with ischemic heart disease, namely myocardial infarction, cardiac rehabilitation services are available in every region.

Whether he has had recent discussions with NICE on reducing overprescribing.

The Department has had no recent discussions with either the Royal Pharmaceutical Society or the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on reducing overprescribing.