Smokefree 2030 Target

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 20th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Sharma. At 9.30 am, it would have been a pleasure to see anybody in the Chair. I place on the record my thanks to you and Mr Evans for stepping into the vacancy. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) and my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) on securing this important debate and on their tireless work on this issue. When we create a smoke-free England—the consensus here today is for a smoke-free Britain—it will be in no small part thanks to their tremendous efforts and campaigning.

I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) and for Blaydon (Liz Twist), and the hon. Members for Southport (Damien Moore), for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Arfon (Hywel Williams), as well as the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), who leads for the Scottish National party on health issues. There is consensus across the Chamber on where we need to go.

In 2019, the Government committed themselves to a Smokefree 2030. As Members across the House will be aware, that means a smoking prevalence of around 5% of the population. The commitment was welcomed across the House, and for good reason: despite significant progress in driving down smoking rates over the past 40 years, smoking, as we have heard today, is still the biggest cause of cancer and death in the United Kingdom. Smoking causes around 150 cancer cases every day, and smoking tobacco kills one person every five minutes.

Those deaths are made all the more tragic by the fact that they are avoidable. By creating a smoke-free England, we would empower people to live happier, longer and healthier lives, and substantially reduce pressure on our NHS, as Cancer Research UK estimates that up to 75,000 GP appointments could be freed up each year if we put an end to smoking. That would all come alongside substantial economic benefits, as smoking costs the public finances an estimated £20.6 billion. The argument for a smoke-free future is overwhelming. We just need to get there.

In a recent response to a written question I tabled, the Minister stated that his Department is “confident” that it is

“on course to achieve…Smokefree 2030,”

but Cancer Research UK estimates that the Government are, as we heard from the hon. Member for Harrow East, on track to miss their Smokefree 2030 target by around nine years. Smoking cessation services have faced cuts of 45% since 2015-16, and in some of the most deprived areas of England, smoking rates are increasing, not decreasing.

That increase is incredibly concerning, and it risks exacerbating health inequalities that are already widening, in some cases at an alarming rate. Therefore, I would be grateful if the Minister explained why his Department is so confident that the 2030 target will be met, and where the Government’s modelling is, as well as why it differs from that of Cancer Research UK.

The announcements the Minister made in April were undoubtedly welcome, but they do not seem to me to be ambitious enough or wide-ranging enough to get us back on track. If that is the case, and if we are to miss the 2030 target, the Department of Health and Social Care needs to fess up and say how it plans to keep its pledge. The truth is that the foot has been taken off the pedal with regard to Smokefree 2030. The Government wasted precious time, and unless they act swiftly the target will be beyond reach. I do not want that. I want the Minister to succeed in achieving the target, and I do not think anybody in the Chamber wants us to miss it.

We need action, so I will press the Minister on a few key points. First, will he confirm whether the Government plan to announce any further measures to tackle smoking prevalence, or whether the April announcement is intended to replace the tobacco control plan and the health disparities White Paper?

Secondly, the April announcement referred to an updated strategy to tackle illicit sales and imports of tobacco due to be released at some point this year. There is a backlog of reports to be published sometime this year. We would like this one to be at the front of the queue, not the back. Will the Minister update Members on where the work has got to and when we can expect publication of the strategy?

Thirdly, the Minister will no doubt be aware that Cancer Research UK and ASH have made several recommendations to the Government, most notably on an increase in the age of sale and a “polluter pays” tobacco levy. I would be interested to hear what recent assessment he has made of those proposals and whether they will inform his Department’s work moving forward.

Finally, cross-Government guidance on protecting public policy from the vested interests of the tobacco industry was published yesterday. That is a step in the right direction, but will the Minister set out how the guidance will be disseminated to all branches of Government, given that it is cross-departmental?

The last Labour Government had a proud history of taking bold action to drive down smoking prevalence. We implemented the indoor smoking ban and took action to tackle cigarette advertising, and we are still feeling the benefits of those policies to this day. We want to continue that legacy and, indeed, the measures that were brought in more recently. That is why creating a smoke-free England within a smoke-free United Kingdom will be an absolute priority for the next Labour Government.

Our recent health mission launch set out the first steps of our road map to a smoke-free Britain. They include making all hospital trusts integrate opt-out smoking cessation interventions into routine care and expecting every trust to have a named lead on smoking cessation, so that every single clinical consultation counts towards health improvement. We would legislate to require all tobacco companies to dispel the myth that smoking reduces stress and anxiety. We would also ban vapes from being advertised to children and instead work with councils and the NHS to ensure that vapes are being used to stop smoking—full stop.

That is just the start of our road map to a smoke-free United Kingdom. The next Labour Government wholeheartedly believe in a smoke-free future, and we will not shy away from taking the bold steps that are needed to protect and improve public health. Until then, we are ready to work constructively and across party lines to build a smoke-free England within a smoke-free United Kingdom. I look forward to hearing how the Government plan to get us back on track.

Cancer Medicines: Appraisals

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 13th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris, and to respond to this debate on behalf of the shadow Health and Social Care team.

I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who I call my hon. Friend, on securing this important debate, and I thank him for his tireless work campaigning on such issues.

Also, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for the powerful case that she put to the Minister in respect of brain tumours generally and specifically the glioblastoma manifesto. I very much hope that the Minister is able to take up her challenge, because the inequalities in outcomes that she laid out are unacceptable. In the year 2023, we should not be looking at a situation in which there have been zero improvements in life expectancy from cancers such as glioblastoma since 2005-06 when we have seen dramatic improvements in the other areas that she mentioned. We owe it to Baroness McDonagh—Margaret McDonagh—and to others such as Tessa Jowell to ensure that we see improvements in this area, too.

As for the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch), she said herself that she has been on the cancer treadmill, and it is lovely to see her back in her place and up to her old usual tricks. We welcome her.

[Tracey Crouch]

I just want to say that I was never not in my place; I was fortunate enough to go through cancer treatment during covid, when we were all working under a hybrid procedure. Actually, that experience has helped to form some of the contributions that I have made to the Procedure Committee about how we in this place support people who are going through significant illnesses.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Absolutely—the virtual Parliament hid a multitude of sins. I know that as somebody who struggled with long covid through that period. Many people would not have known just how ill I was, because I just appeared on a screen. However, it is nice to see the hon. Lady in person; I should put it like that. And she was entirely right to say that cancer touches us all, which is why we can all cite personal experiences of it. I lost my mum to ovarian cancer when I was 19; she was just 50. I lost my dad last year to rectal cancer. I am not alone; we all have people, including close family members and friends, who we have lost to cancer.

I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Midlothian (Owen Thompson), who responded on behalf of the SNP, for his contribution to the debate and to the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), for her intervention.

I am sure that I speak for everybody from all parties in the House when I say that ensuring that patients have quick access to the most innovative and effective treatments is an absolute priority. This country has a proud history of medical innovation, a reputation that we should try not only to protect but to enhance, as we have already heard today.

We are talking today about the appraisal process for cancer patients, which, as we have also heard, has changed markedly over recent years in several areas. We have seen increased focus on targeted treatments and immunotherapies, as well as reform of the cancer drugs fund in 2016, a move that was taken to improve people’s access to cancer drugs while allowing NICE to collate more information on potential areas of clinical uncertainty.

In a recent report, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry highlighted that 78% of medicines have been able to exit the cancer drugs fund with a positive recommendation, with most of them spending about two and a half years in the CDF process. It also recognised improvements as a result of the relaunched CDF, but raised concerns that the CDF has

“perhaps been overly relied upon”

in order to

“delay making routine recommendations.”

It states that

“a new balance may need to be struck between NICE and manufacturers in considering which treatments should enter the CDF to resolve genuine uncertainty surrounding long-term clinical outcomes and for how long.”

Given that NICE recently set out specific circumstances when committees may be able to accept a higher degree of uncertainty in routine commissioning decisions, can the Minister set out whether his Department has assessed the ABPI’s findings and whether more can be done to improve access to innovative treatments for patients via routine commissioning? That links to a wider point that I wish to raise on clinical research and trials.

Clinical trials provide an opportunity for the NHS, businesses and brilliant researchers to work together for the benefit of everyone. Unfortunately, however, in recent years the UK trials industry has collapsed. The number of commercial trials in the United Kingdom decreased by 41% between 2017 and 2021. Worryingly, the UK has dropped from fourth to 10th in the global rankings, behind Spain, France and Italy. Of most concern is that in 2020-21, the NHS lost £447 million in revenue due to a drop-off in clinical commercial trial activity. Those figures should seriously worry the Minister. They risk putting patients at a disadvantage for all kinds of innovative treatments, including cancer medicines.

In Labour’s recent health mission, we committed to putting Britain right at the front of the queue for new medicines and vaccines. Alongside our pledge to spend 3% of GDP on research and development across the public and private sectors, we want our clinical trials to be more competitive, efficient and accessible. Making those ambitions a reality means tackling unnecessary bureaucracy in how trials are set up and reducing the administrative burden on everyone involved in the clinical trial, including the NHS. Will the Minister set out how his Government plan to reverse the drop-off in clinical research and trials—a drop-off that is costing our NHS financially and clinically?

Finally, I want to touch on the issue of patient access to innovative medicines, including for cancer patients. In 2021, in its “Life Sciences Vision”, the Government committed to identifying and addressing “unwarranted variation” in the uptake of innovative medicines. But in February this year, in the innovation scorecard commissioned on behalf of the Department of Health and Social Care, it was found that a number of areas were still falling short of the NICE recommended levels of new medicine uptake.

Will the Minister provide an update on what work he is doing to improve regional variation in uptake of innovative medicines so that no matter where someone lives, they can access the treatment they need when they need it. Will he also commit to improving the data collected as part of the innovation scorecard to include information on cancer medicines so that we can meaningfully assess uptake and isolate areas for improvement where necessary? That is something that the life sciences sector has called for, so I would welcome more information on that from the Minister.

In conclusion, Labour is wholly committed to ensuring that cancer patients in this country receive access to the very best medicine and care. That means ensuring that appraisals for cancer medicines remain fit for purpose and adapt in line with evolving technologies and scientific advancements. It also means turbocharging clinical trials and tackling the unacceptable gaps in access to cutting-edge treatment. In his response, I hope that the Minister will meet the ambition set out by the Labour party and that we can work together towards making Britain a world leader in cancer care and treatment, because we owe it to all those people on the treadmill right now.

Mental Health Treatment and Support

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to close the debate on behalf of the shadow health and social care team.

We have had a thorough debate and we have heard some heartbreaking, harrowing and concerning things during its course. The amendment that the Minister has put down in response to the motion is reminiscent of “Alice Through the Looking Glass”, because it does not bear any relationship to people’s lived experiences of the mental health system in England or the contributions made by Members from both sides of the House to the debate.

I pay tribute to all who have spoken today. There have been some incredible speeches. We heard from the hon. Members for Watford (Dean Russell) and for Penrith and The Border (Dr Hudson), from the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Vicky Ford), and from the hon. Members for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer), for Penistone and Stockbridge (Miriam Candidates), for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell), for Devizes (Danny Kruger), for St Albans (Daisy Cooper), and for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran).

We also heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett), my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), who made an extremely powerful contribution, and my hon. Friends the Members for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), for West Ham (Ms Brown)—I ask the Minister not to forget her request for a meeting; she is certainly someone to whom it is difficult to say no—for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel), for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton), for Halifax (Holly Lynch), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood), for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins), for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) and for Blaydon (Liz Twist). Finally, we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy); I remind the Minister that she would like a response to her request for an inquiry into issues in her local area.

We are facing a mental health emergency in this country—

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Gentleman has said that the Government’s amendment bears no relation to the reality of what people are seeing. In my speech I mentioned the creation of a brand-new facility for patients in mid-Essex, which means that people in crisis are not spending many hours in A&E but are going to a bespoke 24/7 centre. That is the sort of provision that I want to support, and it is mentioned in the Government amendment but not in the Opposition motion.

[Andrew Gwynne]

Of course we need facilities in every part of England, but the fact is that after 13 years, too many parts of England are falling behind. We know that the mental health crisis in this country has become worse on the watch of the right hon. Lady’s Government, and she should have a little contrition about the state of mental health services in England.

[Vicky Ford]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne]

I will not give way. We have heard enough from the right hon. Lady, supporting her “Through the Looking-Glass” amendment which bears no relation to the reality.

As we have heard today, people who require mental health support, no matter where they live—except in the right hon. Lady’s part of England—will be confronted by a system that is buckling under the pressure of 13 years of Tory mismanagement, neglect and incompetence. The right hon. Lady shakes her head, but the figures speak for themselves. Last year, patients suffering with mental health issues waited more than 5.4 million hours in accident and emergency departments. There are 400,000 children currently waiting for mental health treatment, and 1.2 million people are waiting for community mental health care, with some patients being forced to travel more than 300 miles because there are no beds in their local area. My hon. Friend the Member for Hemsworth spoke powerfully about that. The Resolution Foundation has found that, of the 185,000 young people who are unable to work, nearly two thirds cite mental ill health as the reason. Suicide is now the leading cause of death in adults under 34, with about 18 people losing their lives every single day. As the cost of living crisis has worsened, we have also seen a knock-on effect on addiction and rehabilitation. Drug-related deaths are at a record high, and last year there were 9,641 deaths in the UK from alcohol misuse, a 27% increase on the year before.

Make no mistake: the emergency in mental health has become a public health crisis, and we need to see action. Our motion calls on the Government to adopt Labour’s plan to recruit 8,500 mental health staff to expand access to treatment, to provide specialist mental health support in every school, and to establish open-access mental health hubs for children and young people. That would be paid for by the closing of tax loopholes, because politics is about priorities, and Labour’s priority is to ensure that those who need mental health support have access to it in all parts of the country. Our priority is to build a Britain where patients start receiving appropriate treatment within a month of referral. I hope that those on the Government Benches will demonstrate that they share these priorities by voting for Labour’s motion today.

Staffing is just one part of the equation. Like any public health issue, addressing mental health requires a holistic approach that recognises its complex nature. That is why Labour has committed to a whole-Government plan to improve outcomes for people with mental health needs and to address the social determinants that drive mental ill health for many people. Our mental health can be influenced by a multitude of different things. Secure jobs, fair pay and good housing are all building blocks for a healthy life, physically and mentally, and unless we improve people’s lives in the round, positive change will remain out of reach.

It is for this reason that the next Labour Government will focus as much on prevention as we do on treatment. We will pioneer a transformative cross-departmental agenda with a mission delivery board at the heart of the Government ensuring that all Departments work to improve the wider determinants of health. We will boost capacity in mental and public health teams so that people can get the support they need before presenting at A&E or turning to substance abuse. We will also encourage the integrated care systems to identify opportunities to join up services within the community. Our aim will be for more patients to have one point of contact for appointments with a range of professionals and services. This neighbourhood team will include the family doctor, carers, health visitors, social prescribers and mental health specialists.

Our vision is to turn the national health service into a neighbourhood health service with the patient right at the heart of it. The benefits of this kind of work will travel far beyond improving the lives of individuals suffering from mental ill health. For instance, in my own region of the north-west of England there were over 140,000 calls to 999 from people in a mental health crisis last year, and in my own constituency local people spent over 6,500 hours waiting in A&E for mental health treatment. If we were to help people before they reached these crisis points, we would drastically reduce pressure on the wider health system and thereby improve patient outcomes right across the board.

The same is true of wider economic productivity. As we have heard in the debate, the Mental Health Foundation and the London School of Economics have estimated that poor mental health costs the British economy £117 billion a year. That is a phenomenal amount of money and a huge loss to our country’s economic power. Improving mental health outcomes is therefore not just a moral imperative—although it is certainly that—but a practical one, and one that is essential if we want the United Kingdom to prosper, as I hope and believe we all do. That is what we come to this House for. We want to leave our country in a better shape for our children than it has been for ourselves.

That brings me again to the motion. All Members of the House have the opportunity today to support a fully funded plan to improve mental health treatment. Those on the Government Benches can choose to put party politics first, but that will not change the fact that this Government have failed people on mental health. No matter what amendments they put before us, that does not change people’s real, lived experiences or the experiences of Members on both sides of the House who deal with the impact of mental ill health in their constituency casework. The system is crumbling and more of the same will just not cut it, so I am enormously proud to be supporting Labour’s motion today and I would strongly urge Members on both sides of the House to back it. It is time to give those suffering from mental ill health the treatment and support they deserve, and I commend our motion to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I reiterate for those who were not here that it is incredibly important that people get back in good time to hear the Opposition wind-up as well as the Government wind-up—that includes Ministers. I would expect anybody who was not here at the beginning of the Opposition wind-up, some of whom are still not here, to write to Mr Speaker to apologise. I take it that people will do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) pointed out, the brutal truth is that the Tories have consistently missed England’s cancer treatment target since 2013. Last year, 66,000 cancer patients waited more than two months for their first treatment following an urgent GP referral, and the UK now has the worst cancer survival rate in the G7. Labour will give the NHS the staff, the technology and the reform it needs, and we make no apologies for expecting cancer waiting times and diagnosis targets to be met once again. That is our mission. Why is theirs so unambitious?

[Steve Barclay]

We are making significant progress. The hon. Gentleman specifically mentions GP referrals, and there were more than 11,000 urgent GP referrals for suspected cancer per working day in March 2023, compared with just under 9,500 in March 2019, so we are seeing more patients.

Let me give an indication of how we are innovating on cancer. We have doubled the number of community lung trucks, which means the detection of lung cancer at stages 1 and 2 is up by a third in areas with the highest smoking rates. In the most deprived areas, we are detecting cancer much sooner, and survival rates are, in turn, showing a marked improvement.

NHS Dentists: South-West England

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliott. I thank the hon. Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) for securing this really important debate and for the work that he does locally and here in Westminster to raise awareness of the issue. We have had a good, full debate. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) for their contributions, as well as the hon. Members for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), for Poole (Sir Robert Syms), for St Ives (Derek Thomas), for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord), and for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron). That stretches the geography to the limits, but the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale has raised some very important points on behalf of his constituents and rural communities across England, not just in Cumbria.

Last week I responded to a debate on behalf of the shadow Health and Social Care team on dental services, but it was about the east of England. A couple of weeks before that I responded to a Backbench Business debate on NHS dentistry in the main Chamber. I do not raise those debates today to fill you in on my diary commitments over the past few weeks, Ms Elliott, but to highlight the strength of feeling across the House about the crisis we are currently experiencing in dental care.

We are all hearing from constituents who cannot access care, about parents trying to get their children seen and, in the most extreme cases, as we have heard today, patients attempting to perform dental treatments on themselves or on loved ones. So-called dentistry deserts are not being eradicated. Instead, they are multiplying, not least of all in the south-west, as we have heard today.

Last summer it was reported that out of 465 dentists across the south-west, just seven were accepting new patients. Indeed, we have heard more up-to-date statistics from Members during this debate. The number of NHS dentists practising across the south-west has fallen by more than 200, and in areas such as Exeter the current wait to get an NHS dentist is now two years. Behind the statistics are human beings who just want to be seen and to be treated, and we owe it to them to act. So my points to the Minister today will be familiar to him, and I fear that I will keep having to make them time and again until we see the Government’s dental plan.

My first point relates to the dental contract. As I have said before, it was the Labour Government who introduced the dental contract, but by the 2010 general election they had recognised that the contract needed to be substantially reformed. That was in our manifesto. The then Conservative Opposition agreed and it was in their election manifesto, too. The Government have been in power now for 13 years and change has moved at a glacial pace. In his response to the debate last week, the Minister said that he was under

“no illusion that there are significant challenges to address”,—[Official Report, 16 May 2023; Vol. 732, c. 353WH.]

but that those would be tackled in a forthcoming dental plan. Given the urgency of the situation, can the Minister provide an update on the development of the plan and when we can expect publication?

The hon. Member for West Dorset highlighted issues with unit costs being disincentives, and that was followed by other Members during this debate. It is true that dental costs have to be looked at on a per-unit basis because there are perverse incentives, but it would also be wrong to pretend that before the dental contract was introduced, there was a golden age of NHS dentistry. As I said last week, there is a reason why I have a mouthful of fillings and my children do not. It is not because I ate more sweets and did not brush my teeth as well as my children, but because of the then even more perverse incentives for dentists to drill and fill. They were paid for every filling that they put in so that people ended up with a mouthful of fillings whether they were needed or not. We need to strike a balance so that we get the public health needs and patients’ needs as well as a financial package that works for dentists to make a living.

On a similar note, can the Minister update us on the workforce plan? We have heard about that from hon. Members across the House today. We know that it has been produced and that it is on the Secretary of State’s desk. It is particularly pertinent, given that it was revealed earlier this week that the number of active NHS dentists in England is now at its lowest level in a decade, in spite of rising demand and in direct contradiction to claims made by the Prime Minister in Parliament.

Given that net Government spend on general dental practices in England has been cut by more than a third in the past decade and the number of NHS dental practices in England has fallen by more than 1,200, it is of little comfort to patients waiting in abject pain and misery to hear the Government say that a plan is coming. We urgently need to see the workforce plan published and implemented and reforms put in place that work for both patients and staff.

Labour knows we need to change if we are to secure the future of NHS dentistry. We want the NHS to become as much of a neighbourhood health service as it is a national health service. To do that, we will encourage joined-up services in the community that include dentistry. We want to see health professionals such as dentists working with family doctors as part of a neighbourhood team. That will not only help people get access to more care on their doorstep but prevent oral health problems before they become acute. It will also dismantle the two-tier system that has been allowed to develop, where those who can afford to pay receive treatment and those who cannot are left languishing. That is being further compounded by the way the cost of living crisis means some families are unable to afford even basic hygiene products. We are witnessing health inequalities widen in real time as a result, and that must not be allowed to continue.

What does the Minister plan to do to tackle oral health disparities and prioritise prevention? Will that work be part of his dental plan? I am sure this will not be the last dental debate I take part in on behalf of the shadow Health and Social Care team, but I sincerely hope that the next time I am face to face with the Minister in Westminster Hall or the main Chamber, we will have seen some long overdue progress.

It has been demonstrated during today’s debate that this need not be a partisan issue. It is in all our constituents’ interests that the Government crack on now and get improvements to dental care. We all want better dental care for our constituents and, as I said in the last debate and probably the one before that, addressing this crisis cannot wait until we have had a general election. In that vein and in closing, I urge the Minister to recognise that fact and get on with the job.

Cost of Living: Healthy Start Scheme

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure, Mr Twigg, to serve under your chairmanship.

I begin by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Andrew Western) for securing this debate and for the fantastic work that he is doing in raising awareness of this issue.

It has been a small but perfectly formed debate, with the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) contributing to it. He always comes to Westminster Hall full of knowledge and willing to share the Northern Ireland perspective. We are always grateful for that, because we can learn a lot from different parts of the United Kingdom and it is really important that voices from different parts of the United Kingdom are raised in these debates, even though primarily these debates, when they relate to health, relate to health issues in England only. Nevertheless, we are the United Kingdom Parliament and it is really important to know what is happening in other parts of the country where there are devolved Governments.

The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) speaks so well on these issues. She obviously has her role as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on infant feeding and inequalities, and with the work that she does with that APPG she has got really stuck into the matters that we are considering today in real depth and detail. But she also brings a fresh perspective to these debates, as does the hon. Member for Strangford. We learn more from her about what is happening within Scotland through the Scottish Government, and it is important that across the United Kingdom Parliament we hear such examples and that we learn from best practice in different parts of the United Kingdom, so as to make better policy here in Westminster.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston was absolutely right to raise the issues that he did in this debate, because Healthy Start is an essential scheme that ensures that there is a nutritional safety net for pregnant women, parents and children under the age of four in low-income families. It allows parents—in theory —to buy healthy foods such as fruit and milk, as well as to access free vitamins. However, in the context of the cost of living crisis—so eloquently set out by my hon. Friend—families are undoubtedly finding it increasingly difficult to get what they need. Analysis from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service shows that, although the benefit itself has not changed since 2021, the price of infant formula—as we have heard from the hon. Member for Glasgow Central and from my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston—has increased substantially since then. The cheapest brands have increased in price by a phenomenal 22%, which is just unfathomable, in that short space of time.

As we have also heard, huge concerns have been raised about the uptake of the vouchers themselves, particularly following the switch from paper vouchers to a prepaid card system. Healthy Start scheme data for January 2023 shows that up to 37% of eligible families with young children are currently missing out on the scheme. That cannot be acceptable, either. A huge proportion of the people who desperately need that support—or they would not be eligible for it—are missing out.

In an answer on 13 February to a written question tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, the Minister responded:

“While there are no current plans to increase the value of Healthy Start, this is kept under continuous review.”

With that in mind, I would be grateful if the Minister could update us on whether there have been any recent discussions regarding the value of the scheme and whether it is still his Department’s position that no increase in value is forthcoming. If that is the case, can the Minister set out what assessment his Department has made of the impact of inflationary price rises on low-income households, and what reassurances he can provide to all Members here today that families are not being priced out of essential goods on this Government’s watch?

Similarly, I will press the Minister on the uptake of the scheme. The Government’s target for uptake is 75%, but as I mentioned earlier, we are currently sitting at about 63%. A quick trawl of written questions shows that the Minister has been responding to concerns raised by Members on this issue with a boilerplate response—namely, that the NHS Business Services Authority promotes the Healthy Start scheme through its digital channels and has created free tools to help stakeholders to promote the scheme locally. That answer suggests to me that the Government are not particularly concerned about missing their own target. That is not acceptable. I remind the Minister that there is very little point in setting a target if they are not going to do their utmost to meet it. We all know that the NHSBSA promotes this scheme, but something is clearly not working if uptake is as low as it is. What additional action is the Minister planning to take to increase uptake so that all families who are eligible are not just able to access the scheme but do access it?

It would be remiss of me if I did not raise the problem of child health inequalities, which are widening at an alarming rate. At our mission launch on Monday, Labour committed to a children’s health plan that would give every child a healthy start in life. That includes our pledge to establish fully-funded healthy breakfast clubs across England and restrict adverts for foods high in fat, sugar and salt. We would oversee the retrofitting of 19 million homes in England, to keep families warm. We would reform universal credit. And we would pass a clean air Act, to protect our children from the serious respiratory illnesses caused by pollution. It is an ambitious agenda that would proactively tackle child poverty and ensure families could afford to feed their children and keep them well. Over the last 13 years, the UK’s progress on infant and child mortality has stalled, and we now have much worse rates compared with other developed countries. We must see a concerted effort from the Minister to tackle that. More of the same will just not cut it. What exactly is the Government’s plan to meet the scale of the crisis in child poverty and ill health?

All children deserve to lead long, happy and healthy lives, irrespective of where they grow up and which part of the United Kingdom they live in. That means ensuring that in England the Healthy Start scheme works, and that we do everything we can to tackle child poverty across the country. I strongly urge the Minister to better engage with campaigners on the issue and work proactively with Members on all sides of the House to ensure that the Healthy Start scheme is fit for purpose.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

If I can just complete the thought, the total cost of living support that the Government have provided is worth more than £94 billion across 2022-23 and 2023-24. That is, on average, more than £3,300 per UK household. It is one of the most generous support packages for the cost of living anywhere in Europe.

I turn to the critical role that the Healthy Start scheme plays in supporting hundreds of thousands of lower-income families across the country. Eating a healthy, balanced diet, in line with “The Eatwell Guide”, can help to prevent diet-related disease. It ensures that we get the right energy and nutrients needed for good health and to maintain a healthy weight throughout life. The Healthy Start scheme is one way that the Government continue to target nutritional support at the families who need it most, which is increasingly important in view of the cost of living.

Healthy Start is a passported benefit, one of a range of additional sources of help and support that the Government provide to families on benefits and tax credits. It is a statutory scheme that helps to encourage a healthy diet for pregnant women, babies and young children under four from lower-income households. Women who are at least 10 weeks pregnant and families with a child under four years old are eligible for the scheme if they claim: income support; income-based jobseeker’s allowance; child tax credit, if they have an annual family income of £16,190 or less; universal credit, if they have a family take-home pay of £408 or less a month; or pension credit. Pregnant women on income-related employment and support allowance are also eligible for the scheme.

Anyone under 18 who is pregnant is eligible for Healthy Start, regardless of whether they receive benefits. Following the birth of their child, they must meet the benefit criteria to continue receiving Healthy Start. The scheme offers financial support towards buying fresh, frozen or tinned fruit and vegetables, fresh, dried and tinned pulses, plain cow’s milk and infant formula. Beneficiaries are also eligible for free Healthy Start vitamins.

In April 2021, as has been mentioned, we increased the value of Healthy Start by 37%, from £3.10 per week to £4.25 per week. Unlike the Scottish Government’s scheme, which is for the under-threes, Healthy Start is for the under-fours. Pregnant women and children aged over one and under four each receive £4.25 a week, and children aged under one each receive £8.50 a week—twice as much. For a family with a six-month-old and a three-year-old, that is £12.75 a week to help towards buying nutritious foods. That comes on top of the benefits and all the other measures, such as the increase in the national living wage, that I mentioned.

[Andrew Gwynne]

I am grateful to the Minister for rattling off the sums. To go back to the point that the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) made about the Healthy Start grant and why the Government chose not to uprate it, will he share with the House what the cost to the Exchequer would have been to uprate it? That must have been part of their deliberations as to why not to do it. What is the cost?

[Neil O'Brien]

We have chosen to spend over £3,300 per UK household, on average, on the cost of living support. Putting that into the schemes that are available and targeted at people with low incomes, and indeed at the entire population, is the choice that we have made. To reiterate my earlier point, and since the hon. Member says that I am rattling off the figures, it is worth stressing that we have invested £3,300 per household—a colossal sum of money. That is unprecedented. There has never been a cost of living intervention anywhere of that magnitude, so that must be an important part of the discussion about Healthy Start.

Dental Services: East of England

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Mark. I commend the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) for securing this important debate and for setting out some really important points not just for the people of the east of the England—although it has been impressed on me in the course of the debate that there is a specific issue that is pertinent to that area—but for the whole of England, because dentistry is nowhere near where we would want it to be in any part of the country, notwithstanding the differences in regional funding and access that we have heard about.

We have had a really good, thorough debate, and there has been consensus across the Chamber on the state of NHS dentistry. I thank the hon. Members for South Norfolk, for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew), for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for the veritable tour of the east of England and south Lincolnshire that I have been sent on. I am well aware that south Lincolnshire is not in the east of England, although it is close to it and uses lots of public services within it. That is not least because my wife is from Bourne, in Lincolnshire, so I know how the area connects into Cambridgeshire and beyond.

I want to mention the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), because he will have constituency issues that he would have dearly loved to raise in the debate. Having been a parliamentary private secretary myself, I know that they must be seen and not heard—it is one of the curses of the job. The great part of the job is getting to work with wonderful Ministers and being able to lobby them behind the scenes on all these issues. The downside is that constituents do not see the benefit of their MP most of the time. In addition, I thought the hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) made some really important interventions.

It has been said already that we have been here before. I recently participated on behalf of the shadow health and social care team in a Backbench Business debate, which the hon. Member for South Norfolk co-sponsored. I spoke about people having to remove their own teeth, patients waiting over three years to access dental care, and individuals becoming addicted to painkillers because they cannot get treatment. I could go on and on with examples, but they all point to a simple fact: NHS dentistry is in crisis and is not working for the people who need to access treatment now. We have all heard from constituents at a loss about what to do, who are waiting day in, day out in utter agony and crying out for action on NHS dentistry.

As the hon. Member for South Norfolk made clear, the problem is particularly acute in the east of England. In 2022 no dentists were registering new patients in the whole of Suffolk, Norfolk or Cambridgeshire. In Norfolk, and indeed Waveney, there are only 38 NHS dentists per 100,000 people. It is little wonder that we hear stories of DIY tooth extraction, of Norwich hospital treating more people than ever before for opiate addiction and, in some parts of Norfolk, of 40% of under-fives suffering from dental decay.

We cannot go on like this—nationally, across England or in the east of England. Over the last decade, net spend on dental practices in England has been cut by over a third, with 2,000 NHS dentists quitting in 2021 alone. It is not just about this Government; there have been issues for a long period of time, and those have been compounded over a long period of time.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk and others mentioned the 2006 dental contract. As I pointed out in the Chamber in the Backbench Business debate, there was consensus on the effects of the 2006 contract by the 2010 general election.

The last Labour Government recognised that the dental contract needed reforming and pledged to do so in their election manifesto of 2010. So too did the Conservative party in its election manifesto in 2010. It would be remiss of me not to make this point, as the hon. Gentleman indicated I would: you guys have had 13 years to fix that dental contract. It is of deep frustration that in a decade and three years, that has not happened.

I have said this before: there was not a golden era of NHS dentistry before the 2006 contract. The hon. Member for South Norfolk mentioned that before 2006, dentists were paid for each treatment. That worked in the interests of dentists, but not always in the interests of patients. I have also said this before: there is a reason why my mouth is full of metal—crowns and fillings—and it is not because I ate more sweets than my children did or because I brushed my teeth less well. It is because dentists were incentivised to maximise the amount of work they did because that is how they got paid—drill and fill—and that was not always in the interests of public health or the patient.

It was not a bad thing that the Labour Government sought to make changes to bring NHS dentistry more in line with private dentistry, where the emphasis was on prevention rather than on drilling and filling, but it did not work—I make no bones about it. That contract needed to be reformed.

In a similar vein, there is still no sight of the NHS workforce plan—I say that at every opportunity when I face this Minister or others in his Department. We know it currently resides on the Secretary of State’s desk, despite the fact that 90% of dental practices with a high NHS commitment still find it difficult to recruit a dentist, so the key question to the Minister is: what does he plan to do to address the crisis in dental care across England? How do the Government plan to tackle the dental deserts that are causing misery to millions of people, particularly in the east of England? I would also appreciate an update on why the Government are yet to publish the workforce plan in full and when we can expect its release.

It is also important that the Minister recognises the extreme health inequalities that are widening to record levels. Children living in the poorest parts of England are around three and a half times more likely to have rotten teeth removed than those in more affluent areas. That problem is set to get much worse, with families unable to access basic oral hygiene products because of the cost of living crisis. I was very interested to hear of the project in the constituency of the hon. Member for Waveney. Such projects can make a big difference for a small amount of cash at a very local level.

What steps is the Minister planning to take to address the growing inequalities, and what assessment has he made of the continued impact of the cost of living crisis on families who are unable to access oral hygiene products? Labour Members have been clear since 2010 that tackling the crisis in dentistry has to be an absolute priority for any incoming Government, and I include the possibility of an incoming Labour Government. We have a big job of work to do across the whole NHS.

I understand the predicament that the current Government are in, but the previous Labour Government brought waiting lists down across the NHS from 18 months to 18 weeks, and we will do the same again. We want to secure the future of NHS dentistry, and we would provide the staff, equipment and modern technology needed to ensure patients get the care they deserve.

The hon. Member for South Norfolk was absolutely right: if the Government do not move on this territory, the Labour party is there. We have set out how we will pay for the next generation of doctors, nurses, healthcare workers and dentists, with our workforce investment paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. We can begin to chip away at the dreadful oral health inequalities that we see across England. We will train 5,000 new health visitors who work closely with families to promote and prevent ill health. We already know that health visitors have the potential to improve dental attendance and oral health in the families who are least likely to engage with dental services—a role that cannot be overlooked.

People in the east of England and across the nation deserve much better NHS dental services than they are getting. Slowly but surely, we are seeing the creation of the two-tier system that the hon. Member for South Norfolk set out in his opening remarks, where those who are able to pay are receiving essential care, and those who are not are languishing in utter agony, unable to find an NHS dentist. The next Labour Government stand ready and waiting to act to rebuild NHS dentistry. Until then, I urge this Government to get to work. Too many people are suffering, and the current state of crisis must not be allowed to become the new normal.

Food Labelling and Allergies

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Monday 15th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I am grateful to be responding to the debate on behalf of the shadow Health and Social Care team this afternoon.

I thank the hon. Member for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) for his opening contribution and the compelling way in which he put the case to the House. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) for their contributions, as well as the hon. Members for Winchester (Steve Brine), for South East Cornwall (Mrs Murray) and for Chesham and Amersham (Sarah Green), and the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), who spoke for the SNP.

I begin by recognising the courage of Tanya and Emma, who are observing us from the Gallery. I know the etiquette is not to refer to the Gallery, but as we have heard, Tanya’s 15-year-old daughter Natasha died of anaphylaxis after unknowingly consuming sesame in 2016, and Emma’s daughter Shante died after a severe allergic reaction to hazelnut in September 2018. To both of you, I say: I cannot even begin to comprehend the loss that you have both suffered. We are incredibly grateful to be joined by you today, and I pay tribute to the exceptional work that you are doing via the Natasha Allergy Research Foundation. Thanks to the efforts of yourselves and others, full ingredient and allergen labelling on pre-packaged food for sale was introduced in October 2021—something that Members on all sides of the House agree is a vital step in the right direction.

But as has been rightly pointed out, there is still a very long way to go. The UK is now in the top three in the world for the highest incidence of allergies, with hospital admissions for food-induced anaphylaxis tripling over the last 20 years. The largest increase has been seen in children under 15, among whom there has been, on average, a 6.9% annual increase in admissions with a serious allergic reaction. Across all allergy sufferers, 20% live with a severe, debilitating form of their condition. The case for action could not be clearer.

We are here today to respond to two petitions. The first relates to Owen’s law, named after Owen Carey, and I pay tribute to Tanya and Emma. I also pay tribute to Paul, Emma and Owen’s family, who are in the Public Gallery. As we have heard, Owen was an 18-year-old who tragically died after eating a chicken burger marinated in buttermilk, to which he was allergic. Despite checking the menu and making his allergies clear to the server, Owen collapsed 45 minutes after his meal and could not be resuscitated. I know that the Food Standards Agency is considering what steps to take to increase the accuracy of allergen information on non-pre-packed food, but I would be grateful if the Minister provided an update on the development of Owen’s law and on what recent discussions he has had with the FSA on this vital issue.

The second petition calls for a specific allergy tsar, for which Members of different parties, but particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith, have put the case so diligently. As the coroner highlighted following Shante’s death in 2018,

“there is no person with named accountability for allergy services and allergy provision at NHS England or the Department of Health as a whole.”

That is unfathomable, and this runs the

“risk that future deaths will occur unless action is taken.”

That warning was repeated recently by the coroner Heidi Connor following the death of Alexandra Briess in 2021. We have now had two senior coroners making a similar recommendation to the Government that someone —whether we want to call them a tsar, a lead or just someone with named accountability—should be appointed to take responsibility for allergy services in England. I would therefore appreciate it if the Minister outlined what assessment his Department has made or is making about introducing an allergy lead within NHS England or the Department of Health and Social Care, particularly in the light of the powerful interventions that we have heard from patients, bereaved families and coroners and in all the contributions to today’s debate.

The other point on which I would like to press the Minister is NHS service provision. Failings in care for allergic disease have been allowed to fester for far too long. My fear is that with the NHS under increasing stress in terms of waiting times, waiting lists and staff vacancies, the problem may well get worse, not better. What steps is the Minister taking to address the acute problems for allergy sufferers? The Natasha Allergy Research Foundation says that with many GPs not receiving training in allergies, with primary and secondary care services being disjointed and with a shortage of allergy specialists across the UK, there is a postcode lottery of care that is costing lives. That is being compounded by a lack of information, with more than half of integrated care boards not currently holding data relating to allergy disease and treatment. That is not acceptable. I hope the Minister agrees that we need rapid progress in the delivery of allergy care and the monitoring of prevalence and treatment. 

Finally, on research, what steps are the Government taking to support potentially game-changing treatments for many allergy sufferers? I am sure that the Minister will agree that we want to see a world in which allergy diseases are eradicated. Members across the Chamber would greatly appreciate any update on research in the field. We all want improvements in allergy care and support for those living with allergic diseases. We owe it to Tanya, Emma, Natasha, Shante, Owen, Alexandra and all the families who have lost loved ones because of avoidable and treatable allergic reactions. I sincerely hope that today’s debate will instigate a step change and that together we can work towards a future in which allergies are cured and those living with allergic disease are properly supported.

Reforms to NHS Dentistry

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

We have had a full and thorough debate this afternoon on NHS dentistry—something that really matters not just to us as Members of Parliament, irrespective of the party we represent, but more importantly to our constituents. I, too, commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) for securing this debate along with the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). The way that they both put the case before the House has been compelling. It is incumbent on us all to try to find a way through the morass that is NHS dentistry. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) and my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for their contributions.

I also thank the hon. Members for Winchester (Steve Brine), for Hartlepool (Jill Mortimer), for Broxtowe (Darren Henry), for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) and for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell), the right hon. Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher), for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and for Keighley (Robbie Moore) for setting out their own perspectives and the issues that their constituents have raised about NHS dentistry, which are not that dissimilar from the issues that my constituents raise.

It is not a party political point to say that NHS dentistry has been in crisis for a very long time. As we have heard today, patients are being failed on an unprecedented scale. Many are having to suffer through unending pain and misery because they cannot access the care that they so desperately need.

In preparation for this debate, I spoke with people right across the country, and I will share some of the cases that highlight the sheer scale of the crisis. In Darlington, local people have been told that it will take two years for the current backlog in dental care to be cleared, and some are being forced to wait over three years to access treatments. Some residents are being forced into removing their own teeth, in what has been dubbed “DIY” tooth extraction. I shudder to think what state someone’s dentistry services are in when they have to extract their own teeth. Reports have exposed gums becoming infected and individuals becoming addicted to opiates, and unintentionally overdosing on pain relief.

We heard from the hon. Member for Bolsover, but somebody I spoke to raised the fact that local Bupa practices in Bolsover are closing due to a lack of NHS dentists, and patients are being told to glue crowns back on themselves with denture paste because there is no other way of accessing care. The same is true in Corby, where patients are being left stranded after the closure of the Oakley Vale Bupa dental care centre. I could go on. In Loughborough, one resident said that they have been unable to register with an NHS dentist since moving to that part of the country in 2019, and nationally tooth extraction is now the biggest single reason for hospital admissions of under-10s, with 73 children a day having to receive emergency care to remove rotting teeth. When parents try to get appointments for their children, they are turned away.

In Bassetlaw, one resident told local councillors that when she tried to sign her son up to a local NHS dentist she was informed that there was a waiting list of 2,000 people, and that they would have to go private—something that she cannot afford. Local people in Ilkeston have been told to sign up to dentists in Derby because no local surgeries are taking on new patients. The same is true in Darwen, where people are being told that the nearest dentist they can see is in Salford. In Swindon, one parent looking for a dentist for her two-year-old was directed to the only practice that she could find that was taking patients. The problem was that it was 90 miles away in Birmingham. Such stories are commonplace. We have heard them in contributions from Members on both sides of the House.

It would be wrong to pretend that there was a golden age of NHS dentistry in recent years. There was no utopia. There is a reason my teeth, and I hazard a guess those of many Members in the Chamber, are full of fillings. It is not because we failed to brush our teeth as well as our children brush theirs, or because we ate more sweets than our children; it is because the financial incentive in the past was to drill and fill, whether someone required that filling or not. The contract, which is a big part of the problem today, was brought in with the right intention: to move NHS dentistry more towards prevention. However, it did not work. As the right hon. Member for Tatton set out, the issue of funding through units meant that many dentists were just not incentivised to take on NHS care. Tinkering will not work either. It is incumbent on us all to work out a system that will both work and put the capacity back into NHS dentistry, so that patients get the care that they need and deserve, and dentists get the appropriate financial recompense.

I will pose a few questions to the Minister, because we know that a plan is coming. Will he set out, first and foremost, what steps the Government will take in that plan to immediately improve access to dental treatment in the so-called dental deserts? Additionally, given that a recent BDA member survey showed that more than nine in 10 owners of dental practices with a high NHS commitment found it difficult to recruit a dentist, what is he doing to fill the widespread vacancies across the sector? I assume this information exists in the NHS workforce plan, which is still sitting on the Secretary of State’s desk. Will the Minister update the House on why the plan is yet to be published and when we can expect the Government to release it?

We know that NHS dentistry has not worked for a very long time. Governments of all colours are responsible for where NHS dentistry is today. I am not bothered about the past. People with toothache or oral health issues want help today, so it is incumbent on all Members to make sure NHS dentistry is fit for the future, because the stories and statistics that Members on both sides of the House and I have communicated in this debate are simply not acceptable. The Opposition stand ready and willing to help the Government to build the NHS dental services this country needs and, when the time comes under the next Labour Government, to make those NHS dental services the best they can be.

Oral Answers

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is absolutely right: we should be narrowing the health inequalities in this country. It is just a shame that, on his watch, we are not. A baby born in Blackpool today will live eight years less than a baby born in Kensington. Under this Tory Government, health inequalities have widened in many parts of the country. They have scrapped their health disparities strategy and cut the number of health visitors by a third, and ordinary families are paying the price. Why does the Secretary of State not get a grip, adopt Labour’s plan to scrap the non-dom tax status and train 5,000 new health visitors, so that every child has a healthy start to life?