Every parliamentary written question tabled by Peter Prinsley this session, with the full answer and department. See how every department answers, or back to the MP page.
Showing 41–60 of 113 · this parliament
Whether the Government holds data on the average resident doctor study budget in England compared with that available in (a) Scotland and (b) Wales.
For the 2025/26 financial year, the total study budget allocated for doctors and dentists in postgraduate training in England is £54.5 million. The levels of spend by individual trainees are not collected centrally.We do not hold comparable data for Scotland and Wales.
What the average annual study budget available for resident doctors in England who are undertaking training or professional development is.
For the 2025/26 financial year, the total study budget allocated for doctors and dentists in postgraduate training in England is £54.5 million. The levels of spend by individual trainees are not collected centrally.We do not hold comparable data for Scotland and Wales.
What steps are being taken to ensure patients who receive care at a surgical hub outside of their local area have access to follow-up treatment such as rehab in their locality.
The Government is committed to putting patients first. This means making sure that patients are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care.The responsibility for ensuring that patients receive the right ongoing care sits with the trust whose care the patient is under. In addition, the Getting It Right First Time programme has set clear expectations that all surgical hubs should provide patients with information on how and where to access rehabilitation services post discharge, and this includes for patients returning home to a different system.
What steps he is taking to tackle elective care waiting times including joint replacement surgery in (a) Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket and (b) nationally.
The Government is committed to putting patients first, nationally and in Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket. This means making sure that patients, including those waiting for joint replacement surgery, are seen on time and ensuring that people have the best possible experience during their care. Bury St Edmunds and Stowmarket is predominantly served by the West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust. Over half, or 50.9%, of patients on the trauma and orthopaedic waiting list, which includes joint replacement surgery, were waiting within 18 weeks, an improvement of 7.9% since July 2024, and the number waiting more than 52 weeks has also fallen by over 70%. Nationally, the number of patients on trauma and orthopaedic waiting lists waiting within 18 weeks has improved by 3.6% and the number waiting more than 52 weeks has fallen by over 16,000 in the same period. We set out in the 2025 Elective Reform Plan the productivity and reform efforts needed to reach the National Health Service constitutional standard that 92% of patients wait no longer than 18 weeks from referral to consultant-led treatment by March 2029. The plan outlines actions that will help to ensure care is delivered in the right place, and includes £1.65 billion of capital funding in 2025/26 to deliver new surgical hubs, diagnostic scanners, and beds to increase capacity for elective and emergency care. Currently, there are 123 surgical hubs operational across England, including two in the Suffolk and North East Essex Integrated Care System, and we are committed to expanding the number of hubs over the next three years to increase surgical capacity and deliver faster access to common procedures, including trauma and orthopaedic procedures. In December 2024, we opened the Newmarket Community Diagnostic Centre which increased diagnostic capacity, with over 34,000 scans conducted for more than 21,000 patients, and which led to a 53% reduction in the magnetic resonance imaging waiting list between December 2024 and October 2025. As of September 2025, community diagnostic centres are now delivering additional tests and checks in 170 sites. We have also confirmed 13 new state-of-the-art DEXA scanners to support better bone care, delivering on this Government’s commitment in the Elective Reform Plan. These will allow for an extra 29,000 bone scans per year, benefitting tens of thousands of patients.
Whether she plans to mandate antisemitism awareness education for (a) children and (b) teachers.
There is no place for antisemitism in our society.The Holocaust is the only historic event which is compulsory within the national curriculum for history at key stage 3. Teaching about antisemitism is integral to teaching this event. There are other opportunities in the curriculum for schools to teach about antisemitism, including through citizenship, relationships and religious education.The department supports teachers through our Educate Against Hate website, which provides teachers with a range of free, quality-assured resources, including on building resilience to antisemitism, teaching about tolerance and rejecting discrimination.The department has committed £7 million to fund projects and programmes to improve confidence and resilience in tackling antisemitism in education.
If he will implement a formal mentoring programme for doctors.
There are currently no plans for a central mentoring programme for doctors. Such programmes are provided by some National Health Service trusts, integrated care boards and Royal Colleges.
What steps his Department is taking to support early interventions in maternity care.
We are rolling out several measures to support early interventions in maternity care.These include implementing the Saving Babies’ Lives ‘Bundle’, which provides evidence-based guidance for providers of maternity care to help reduce adverse outcomes and optimise care; rolling out 14 Maternal Medicine Networks across England to ensure that women with chronic and acute medical problems around pregnancy have access to specialist care; and piloting Martha’s Rule in maternity and neonatal units in 14 Trusts in six regions.In addition, we are developing a Maternal Care Bundle that will tackle the main causes of maternal death and harm, expected to be published this autumn. We are also launching a £50 million National Institute for Health Research challenge fund to task researchers with finding new ways to tackle maternity disparities and poor pregnancy outcomes.
What assessment her Department has made of the potential impact of falling birth rates on the sustainability of small rural primary schools; and what steps she is taking to ensure that these schools are (a) protected and (b) supported.
The department recognises the essential role that small, rural schools play in their communities. The national funding formula (NFF) accounts for the particular challenges faced by small schools in rural areas, namely, the impact of falling rolls, through the lump sum and sparsity factors. The NFF lump sum for the 2025/26 financial year is set at £145,100 and provides a fixed amount of funding that is unrelated to pupil-led factors. In addition, eligible primary schools attract up to £57,400, and eligible secondary or all-through schools attract up to £83,400, in sparsity funding in 2025/26 through the NFF.Local authorities hold the statutory place planning function, ensuring there are sufficient schools in their area to meet the needs of pupils. It is for local authorities, in collaboration with academy trusts and other local partners, to balance the supply and demand of school places, in line with changing demographics, as they have done for many years.
What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the NHS Dispensing Fee for dispensing GP practices in the context of recent increases in employers’ National Insurance contributions.
General practices (GPs) are valued independent contractors who provide over £13 billion worth of National Health Services. Every year we consult with the profession about what services GPs provide, and the money providers are entitled to in return under their contract, taking account of the cost of delivering services, including dispensing fees. Dispensing practices receive a dispensing fee, approximately £2.00 to 2.50 per item, which is intended to cover dispensing costs. This fee is calculated based on the forecasted volumes of prescriptions to be dispensed and the size of the funding envelope, according to a methodology agreed by the Department, the General Practitioners Committee, NHS Employers, and the Welsh Government. An updated methodology was agreed between the British Medical Association and NHS England to address the issue of continuing fluctuation between over and underspend year on year, the alternating pattern of over and under spends, and implemented in October 2023. We are investing an additional £1.1 billion in GPs to reinforce the front door of the NHS, bringing total spend on the GP Contract to £13.4 billion in 2025/26, which is the biggest cash increase in over a decade. The 8.9% boost to the GP Contract in 2025/26 is greater than the 5.8% growth to the NHS budget as a whole.
What progress the General Dental Council has made on procuring a new examination board for the Overseas Registration Exam.
I have asked the General Dental Council (GDC) to present its action plan to reduce the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) waiting list in the autumn, when the GDC also expects to be able to announce the new contract provider for the ORE.
What progress the General Dental Council has made on developing an action plan to reduce the waiting list for the Overseas Registration Exam.
I have asked the General Dental Council (GDC) to present its action plan to reduce the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) waiting list in the autumn, when the GDC also expects to be able to announce the new contract provider for the ORE.
What consultation her Department undertook on the potential impact of changes to the skilled worker route on the supply of (a) dental hygienists and (b) dental nurses.
On 12 May, we published our Immigration White Paper ‘Restoring Control over the Immigration System’, outlining our future approach to legal migration routes. The first set of immigration rules giving effect to the policies in the White Paper was published on 1 July, including raising the skills threshold to RQF 6 and we will publish an impact assessment of this change in due course.
What discussions he has had with the General Medical Council on ensuring that doctors who are unwell seek professional help for their condition, in the context of the General Medical Council's decision to remove health as a specific grounds for action in fitness to practise investigations.
The Government has committed to bringing forward legislation to modernise the regulation of doctors in the United Kingdom by the General Medical Council (GMC) in this Parliament. Government officials are working closely with the GMC and other stakeholders, and we expect to be in a position to consult on a draft legislative framework for the GMC, which will include proposed grounds for action in fitness to practice cases, by the end of 2025.The GMC and all other healthcare professional regulators will continue to have a duty of care to any of their registrants who have physical or mental health concerns. This includes, where necessary, supporting them to work within a safe scope of practice. Healthcare professional regulators must ensure that any fitness to practice concerns relating to a health condition are handled sensitively and confidentially in a way that balances the rights and interests of the registrant with the need to ensure public protection.
What plans his Department has to mandate (a) NHS trust organisations, (b) health boards and (c) professional regulators to collect and publish annual data on sexual misconduct cases.
We are committed to ensuring that all National Health Service healthcare settings are safe places to work and everyone working in the NHS feels safe at work. There is a zero-tolerance approach to any instances of sexual misconduct in the NHS workplace.NHS England is currently reviewing sexual misconduct data as part of a wider review of Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (DASV) data to promote better collection of annual data on sexual misconduct cases. Better collection of data will support and strengthen the zero-tolerance approach. NHS England is currently reviewing staff sexual misconduct workforce data as part of wider DASV data improvement work.
What steps he is taking to help ensure trauma-informed education and training for all staff involved in fitness-to-practice cases within the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) is a statutory committee of the General Medical Council (GMC), the independent regulator of all medical doctors, anaesthesia associates and physician associates practising in the United Kingdom. The MPTS operates separately from the investigatory role of the GMC to make impartial decisions about whether doctors are fit to practise medicine. The MPTS is independent of Government, accountable to the GMC and Parliament. The appointment, training and appraisal of tribunal members is undertaken by the MPTS to ensure independence of tribunal decision making. All tribunal members are required to take part in annual training. In 2024, this included decision making in sexual misconduct cases, supported by case studies, encompassing inappropriate sexual behaviours, sexual motivation and sexual harassment, rape myths and assessing demeanour. The UK's model of healthcare professional regulation is founded on the principle of regulators operating independently from government. My Rt. Hon. friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has not taken any steps to ensure trauma-informed education and training for all staff involved in fitness-to-practice cases within the MPTS.
What recent discussions he has had with the Care Quality Commission on the introduction of specific metrics to tackle sexual misconduct.
The Department has not had any recent discussions with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regarding the introduction of specific metrics to tackle sexual misconduct.Nonetheless, the CQC monitors for concerns related to sexual misconduct as part of its regulatory responsibilities. This is in line with Regulation 13 of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014, which requires that service providers must have a zero tolerance approach to abuse, including sexual abuse and harassment. Failure to comply with Regulation 13 can have serious consequences, including regulatory action from the CQC, potentially leading to a provider being denied registration, or in some cases, prosecution.
What steps his Department is taking to establish a national anonymous reporting mechanism for sexual misconduct in the NHS.
We are committed to ensuring that all National Health Service healthcare settings are safe places to work and that everyone working in the NHS feels safe and supported at work. There is a zero-tolerance approach to any instances of sexual misconduct in the NHS workplace. The NHS Sexual Safety Charter has been signed by over 400 organisations across the health system to date and requires signatories to ensure appropriate reporting mechanisms are in place, including anonymous reporting. This has been strengthened by the National People Policy Framework on Sexual Misconduct and further evaluation work is ongoing to ensure consistent implementation across all integrated care boards and NHS trusts.
What recent discussions he has had with professional regulators to ensure consistent management of sexual misconduct cases.
The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) oversees the bodies which regulate health and care professionals in the United Kingdom. As with all UK healthcare professional regulators, the PSA is independent of Government, and directly accountable to Parliament. As the oversight body for the UK healthcare regulators, it annually reviews each professional regulators’ performance and publishes its findings.Since 2006, the PSA has published guidance for healthcare regulators, employers and patients on tackling sexual misconduct amongst healthcare professionals as part of the ‘Clear Sexual Boundaries’ project.The recommendations in the reports have been used by all the statutory healthcare regulators as a basis for reviewing and aligning their own guidance to registrants on standards of professional behaviour. In addition, Fitness to Practise Committees consider the guidance when making decisions on sanctions in cases involving sexual misconduct by registrants to ensure they are proportionate and equitable across professions. Regulators have also committed to working with registrants, employers, education providers and other stakeholders to develop more effective ways to prevent sexual misconduct by registrants and to improve the detection of perpetrators of sexual misconduct.My Rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has not had any recent discussions with professional regulators to ensure consistent management of sexual misconduct cases.
Whether he plans to publish a roadmap outlining how NHS trust organisations will implement the national sexual misconduct policy framework.
NHS England published a National Sexual Misconduct People Policy Framework in October 2024 and is currently conducting an evaluation of how this is being implemented across integrated care boards and National Health Service trusts. The results of this will inform next steps in terms of further implementation support, which could include a roadmap if needed for NHS trust organisations.
What recent discussions he has had with the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service on the revision of sanctions banding for sexual misconduct cases.
The Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS) is a statutory committee of the General Medical Council (GMC), which is the independent regulator of all medical doctors, anaesthesia associates, and physician associates practising in the United Kingdom. The MPTS operates separately from the investigatory role of the GMC to make impartial decisions about whether doctors are fit to practise medicine. The MPTS is independent of the Government, and is accountable to the GMC and Parliament. In September 2025, subject to approval from GMC Council, the MPTS will publish a new set of Guidance to MPTS Tribunals, which will replace the current Sanctions Guidance. This updated guidance includes a new decision-making methodology and new sanctions bandings, to improve transparency and support consistent decision making. The UK's model of regulation for healthcare professionals is founded on the principle of regulators operating independently from the Government. My Rt Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has not had any recent discussions with the MPTS on the revision of sanctions banding for sexual misconduct cases.