NHS Dentistry
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Gill Furniss(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
The crisis in NHS dentistry is plain to see and it is affecting so many of my constituents. I am therefore grateful for this opportunity to shed light on this emergency and to support Labour's plan to rebuild our broken dentistry. People are finding it impossible to find an NHS dentist for themselves and their children, which is leading to serious consequences for public health. It is also exacerbating health inequalities, and creating a divide between those who can afford private dentistry and those who cannot. The proportion of children with dental decay in the most deprived areas is more than two and a half times greater than it is in the least deprived areas, and the gap is widening. That has led to a public health crisis: 169 children each day are undergoing tooth extraction; rotting teeth is, shockingly, the No. 1 cause of hospital admissions among six to 10-year-olds; and one in 10 people have even attempted their own do-it-yourself dentistry, which just does damage and puts even more pressure on the NHS. That reads like a Charles Dickens novel, but it is the harsh reality of 14 years of Conservative government. Nowhere is that more apparent than in my constituency, where not one of the seven dental surgeries that recently provided an update was accepting new adult patients and only one was accepting new child patients.
Although those figures are appalling, they are not surprising. I am regularly contacted by constituents who cannot find an NHS dentist and cannot afford to go private. They ask me, “What am I supposed to do?”. Without radical reform, there is no answer I can give them. We often talk about crumbling dental services, but in my constituency they have already crumbled; the services simply are not there for the people who need them most. One constituent has contacted more than 25 dentists in Sheffield, with each telling her the same thing: they are not accepting new NHS patients at this time. The best she has been offered is to be put on a waiting list, which could last years. She cannot afford to go private, so she and her young child are stuck without any access to a dentist. We have also seen the provision of community dental services grind to a halt. Those services are a vital safety net, providing specialised treatment when other dentists cannot accommodate the needs of disabled people and people with long-term health conditions. That safety net is no longer there for all too many people. Research shows that, nationally, more than 12,000 children were on a waiting list for community dental services at the start of 2023, and they could face waits of up to 80 weeks for tooth extractions. Healthwatch has heard from many people and their carers who cannot access community dentistry, leaving them without treatment.
The basic provision of NHS dentistry has been worn away on this Government’s watch. The warning signs of this crisis have been stark for years, but Ministers have continued to bury their heads in the sand. Funding has been cut in real terms, meaning that dentists are leaving the NHS in droves and areas such as mine have become dental deserts. It is clear that this Government are not willing to provide the radical changes needed to bring NHS dentistry back from the brink. In April last year, Ministers promised a new dental recovery plan; but we are still waiting for it to see the light of day. I urge the Minister to tell us when that will happen and not just say “soon”. Labour has formulated a fully costed plan that will get NHS dentistry back up and running. The best treatment is prevention, which is why Labour will introduce a targeted, supervised toothbrushing scheme for three to five-year-olds, encouraging lifelong good dental hygiene. Labour will also provide an extra 700,000 urgent appointments per year to help the most vulnerable access the services they need and introduce an incentive scheme to bring more dentists to dental deserts. I am proud to say that all of that will be paid for by abolishing the non-dom tax status. Those tangible steps will bring NHS dentistry back to constituencies such as mine, where services have disappeared. Where this Government have failed, Labour will step in and help all our constituents to access the NHS dentistry they need. I will be proud to support Labour’s plan in today's vote, and I urge all colleagues, including Conservative Members, to vote with us.
Madam Deputy Speaker
I call the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care.
Preventing Crime and Delivering Justice
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Gill Furniss(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Gill Furniss
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, but I would say: your Government have been in power for 12 years and, if you did not like it, why did you not do something before?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. The hon. Lady knows that she must not address the hon. Gentleman directly.
Gill Furniss
I apologise, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Cutting BTECs flies directly in the face of levelling up. Instead of that, the Government should be championing them alongside T-levels. That is just one example of the Government’s actions failing to meet their rhetoric. Ministers are already making excuses on levelling up. The Levelling Up Secretary has spent the last week trying to cover up his own failures and those of the Government. He is trying to lead us to believe that deepening inequality is purely a result of external events such as covid and the war in Ukraine, but we know the truth.
We know that responsibility for the entrenched inequalities in our society falls at the door of this Conservative Government and their policies. Pensioners are having to ride buses all day to keep warm and families are struggling to afford the basic essentials, but, instead of stepping in, the Government are stepping aside. They are too busy trying to cover their own shortfalls to provide the support that people are crying out for. We all know why they are doing that: one day, just like the long-term economic plan and the northern powerhouse, levelling up will be retired as a political slogan with nothing to show but deeper inequality and worsening living standards.
The Government have once again shown that they are all talk and no action. The Queen’s Speech is yet another missed opportunity that fails to fix the deep-rooted inequalities caused by 12 years of this Conservative Government. They are out of ideas and out touch—and hopefully, following the Conservatives’ dire local election results on Friday, they will soon be out of office. Britain deserves so much better than this.
Social Care
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Gill Furniss(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
Nearly every day, my office is introduced to a new case in which a constituent and his or her family are facing the harsh and difficult realities of a social care system in crisis, but this is not a crisis born out of necessity. Unfortunately, it is the cruel consequence of an ideologically driven cost-cutting agenda in action. It is a crisis that has been created at the heart of No 10.
The Tories have presided over an unprecedented attack on social care budgets. Some £4.6 billion has been taken from adult social care budgets since 2010, at a time when demand is growing. Reports by the King’s Fund make it clear that the adult social care system as it stands is
“failing older people, their families and carers”,
and that it will have a funding hole of £2.1 billion by 2019-20 which, if left unresolved, will continue to fuel the crisis. The same pattern is found in my home town, Sheffield, where there is a growing population of over-65s, all with a longer life expectancy than ever before. Sheffield City Council’s budget has been cut to the tune of £352 million since 2010, and further cuts are on their way.
As a result of the cuts, councils have had to make difficult decisions. Across England, 400,000 fewer people are able to access publicly funded social care, and one in eight older people is living with unmet care needs. The impact on people and their families in our communities has been harrowing. What is more, the deep cuts inflicted by No. 10 are not only cruel, but nonsensical and ineffective. For example, councils are having to limit the hourly care fees paid to providers.
A recent case in my constituency has highlighted the doubly negative effect of limited administration and care payment resources. My constituent has significant daily care needs, and she and the council have struggled to keep up with resourcing those complex needs. Care providers have withdrawn at short notice, leaving the council and the patient’s family frantically trying to find a new provider. The under-resourcing of social care creates the dual problem of a higher than acceptable turnover of providers, and councils without the resources to step in effectively. That causes much upset and pain to the most vulnerable in our society.
Another consequence of the deep cuts is the level of the duty of care that is being placed on unpaid carers, and, as we know, women are largely bearing the brunt of that work. In one case, a granddaughter cared for her grandmother for 100 hours per week, and when she applied for a care package in the hope of receiving some financial support, it took six months to come through. The long-winded process often leaves carers with no support at all. That is not an isolated case; in fact, there are 6.5 million unpaid carers in the UK.
I am proud that in Labour’s election manifesto we pledged to increase carer’s allowance for unpaid full-time carers to align the benefit with jobseeker’s allowance rates. That is a practical and sensible solution, which also seeks to highlight the valuable work that nurses, social care workers and carers do for our communities. Too often, they are sidelined and their efforts shunned. They need a Government for the many, not just the privileged few, to stand up for them.
Crucially, the knock-on effects of a social care crisis are felt acutely by the NHS. Indeed, this year’s general election was the ultimate litmus test for the social care policies presented by the Tories and the Labour party. Labour not only pledged to invest £8 billion to alleviate some of the immediate problems facing social care, but promised to build a new national care service bringing together health and social care, which we would implement following a cross-party consensus. In a civilised society, it is vital for us to pool the risk, and not allow the most vulnerable to fend for themselves in old age.
Meanwhile, the Prime Minister launched a nasty campaign against older people the likes of which we have not seen in decades. Following their U-turn on the dementia tax, the Tories have now turned their attention to blaming and threatening councils with fines and sanctions—