Results 1-20 of 4,472 for in the 'Commons debates' OR in the 'Westminster Hall debates' OR in the 'Lords debates' OR in the 'Northern Ireland Assembly debates' speaker:Earl Howe

Care Bill [HL]: Second Reading (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: I begin by thanking everyone who has spoken today. There have been some excellent and highly informed contributions from all sides of the House. Health and care matter to us all throughout our lives; the quality of the contributions today demonstrates how important the issues are in this Bill. I am grateful in particular for the welcome given to Part 1 of the Bill by many noble Lords. A large...

Care Bill [HL]: Second Reading (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate. Care and support are things that everyone will experience at some point in their lives, whether they need it themselves, know a family member or a friend who does, or provide care themselves. Yet today’s care and support system often fails to live up to the expectations of those who rely on it. While many have good experiences, the system...

NHS: GP Services — Statement (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, I think that the GP contract is but one element of a more complicated picture. It is not the only issue or, indeed, is it the only solution. It is true that access to out-of-hours care in some parts of England is simply not good enough. We are not saying that family doctors should necessarily go back to being on call in the evenings and at weekends. They work hard and have families,...

NHS: GP Services — Statement (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: The noble Lord, Lord Laming, has summed up the situation extremely well. I am sure he knows that Sir Bruce Keogh, the NHS medical director, is currently looking at how NHS services across the piece can be provided seven days a week in a much fuller way than they are at the moment. Access to GPs out of hours is part of that wider consideration and NHS England is working with the royal colleges...

NHS: GP Services — Statement (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, I certainly did not mean to mislead the House and if I have done so in any way I apologise. The summary given by the noble Lord is broadly right. Under the old general medical services contract, GPs had a 24-hour responsibility for their patients, although most GPs delegated responsibility to GP co-operatives or commercial providers. At the beginning of 2004, as I recall, only a...

NHS: GP Services — Statement (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, my noble friend makes an extremely important point. He may know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is very concerned to look carefully at the current contract to make sure that it does not include too many perverse incentives to tie GPs’ time up too much. If we can work towards a contract with the agreement of the profession that enables GPs to take a more...

NHS: GP Services — Statement (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, we know that A&E departments are under pressure, and the noble Lord is absolutely right to emphasise that. Over 1 million more people are visiting A&E departments compared with three years ago. However, we also know that, on the whole, the NHS is performing well. The latest weekly figures for emergency services show that 96.3% of patients visiting A&E are being seen...

NHS: GP Services — Statement (21 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, I shall now repeat, as a Statement, the Answer given in another place to an Urgent Question earlier today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Health. The Statement is as follows: “I have been clear that we have not been satisfied with the performance of A&E over the winter period. On 13 May, I announced to Parliament my intention to launch a new plan...

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: The Office for National Statistics publishes national cancer mortality data annually. Data are collected where cancer has been recorded as the cause of death, but not on treatment for cancer as the cause of death. I therefore regret that I am unable to provide this information.

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, I agree that it is important to have more information on the effect of cancer treatments on mortality. New data collections which will provide more detail in this area are under way. The systemic anti-cancer therapy dataset will enable better information to be collected about deaths after the delivery of chemotherapy, and the cancer outcomes and services data set will provide...

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, the noble Lord makes a good point. When recording the cause of death on a medical certificate of cause of death, doctors are required to start with the immediate, direct cause of death and then go back through the sequence of events or conditions that led to death until they reach the one that started the fatal sequence. This initiating condition will usually be selected as the...

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, I agree, and I am confident that over the years ahead we will see a much greater emphasis on stratified medicine, particularly if we can relate treatments to genomic data.

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My noble friend has raised a very live issue because consultation will begin shortly on the Government's plans to reform the governance relating to death certification. The proposed reforms will simplify and strengthen the process for death certification by appointing local medical examiners to provide independent medical scrutiny of the cause of death for all deaths not subject to coronial...

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, for many patients, that is so, but of course the decision whether to administer aggressive forms of treatment must be one for the individual patient in consultation with his or her clinician.

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My noble friend raises a very important issue. I agree that it is important to draw together as much information as we can about causes of death from across the country. However, I am advised that the question of whether a cancer-related death can be attributed to the underlying disease or to the treatment cannot be answered comprehensively from information collected as part of the death...

Health: Cancer — Question (20 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My noble friend asks a very good question. I will write to her on the specific question of dementia. I understand that the completed medical certificate of cause of death is given to the bereaved family which will present it to the registration service to register the death. The registrar will check that the doctor has completed the certificate fully, so it could then be open to the family to...

NHS: GP Dispensing — Question (16 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, the current NHS (Pharmaceutical and Local Pharmaceutical Services) Regulations 2013 continue an agreement reached between representatives of pharmacist and GP contractors setting out the circumstances under which patients living in designated rural areas are eligible to receive dispensing services from their GP. To make any significant change in the regulations would mean reopening...

NHS: GP Dispensing — Question (16 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, there is a balance of interests here, not least the interests of the patient. We therefore need a set of rules which reflects those interests. Patients who live in a rural area can be dispensed to by their GP if there is no pharmacy within 1.6 kilometres of where the patient lives, or within 1.6 kilometres of the GP practice. Without these rules, it would rarely be viable for new...

NHS: GP Dispensing — Question (16 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My noble friend makes a good point. There is a special provision that allows a patient who has serious difficulty in getting to a pharmacy by virtue either of the distance involved or lack of means of communication to receive dispensing services from a doctor. Any patient is eligible to receive these services; they do not have to live in a rural area to do so.

NHS: GP Dispensing — Question (16 May 2013)

Earl Howe: My Lords, the rules as they stand do not present a major obstacle for disabled patients. Many pharmacies, for example, offer a free prescription collection and delivery service if a patient encounters difficulty in getting into the pharmacy premises. Under that arrangement, the pharmacy collects the prescription from the surgery on behalf of the patient, dispenses it and delivers it to the...