Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

15. What steps she is taking to improve patient access to primary care.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

19. What steps she is taking to improve patient access to primary care.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom)]

We are enormously grateful for the work of GPs in delivering 64 million more appointments nationally than in 2019. Our primary care recovery plan enhances GP access by expanding community pharmacy services nationwide. Some 98% of community pharmacies have signed up to the Pharmacy First offer, with over 125,000 consultations claimed in the first month.

[Alistair Strathern]

Across Bedfordshire, we suffer from patient to GP ratios that are well in excess of the national average; high housing growth is simply not matched by GP capacity. At Wixams, we have been able to break through 15 years of deadlock by putting stakeholders together, but issues still remain across the county. From Shefford to Stondon, heartbreaking stories are commonplace. The issue is not ICB-specific; it affects people right across the country. What more can we do to ensure that areas with high housing growth have the GP capacity that residents deserve?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. He may be aware that the Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes ICB received £36 million for its operational capital budget in 2023-24, with over £118 million for this spending review period. That operational capital is core funding provided to ICBs for delivering primary care, among other things. In addition, he will be aware that ICBs are able to provide input to planning permissions to ensure that primary care is delivered where there are new housing developments. I have worked with other hon. Members across the House to tackle this issue, and I am very happy to meet him to discuss it further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I understand the concerns—we have seen them in the media—but, please, we in this House have a responsibility to our constituents and to professionals working in healthcare, including our clinicians and physician associates. In fact, physician associates have been working in the NHS for some two decades. They are there to work with doctors to assist them, freeing up doctors’ time to focus on the tasks that only they are qualified to do. We have been very careful to listen to the concerns raised, which is why we recently announced intentions to regulate them. But, please, we must all take that responsibility for ensuring that we are not spreading concern. Actually, these roles can have a very positive effect on healthcare system.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

My constituents are fed up with battling to see a GP. I have been working hard across party lines with local councillors and the ICB, but I was surprised to hear from the Prime Minister in response to a question last week that only £2 million was allocated to my ICB for primary care, and that it should raid its hospital refurbishment budget instead. Could the Secretary of State advise me which part of the much needed hospital investment should be overlooked to compensate for the failure to invest in primary care locally?

[Victoria Atkins]

Again, it is for integrated care boards to assess the needs of their area. If there are concerns about access to primary care, we are keen to give them the autonomy to make decisions about how they spend their budget. We have set expectations of integrated care boards in a couple of respects—in particular, we expect them to use the money that we have provided for dental care and we have set clear expectations that integrated care boards will introduce at least one women’s health hub in their area this year.

NHS Dentistry: Recovery and Reform

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My ethos is to make our NHS and social care system faster, simpler and fairer, and not just for patients but for practitioners. We do not want bureaucracy to get in the way of the delivery of these services, and I am impatiently keen to get them up and running in Members’ constituencies, so we will ensure that we make it is easy as possible for dental practices to use them.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

I am sure that fellow former teachers who are here today will have memories of the disappointment they felt when, after repeated delays and excuses, a student finally handed in some work, only for it to turn out to be not just a copy of someone else’s work, but a pretty poor one at that. After so much delay and uncertainty, dentistry is at breaking point, so any progress, however late, has to be welcomed. But every local professional network I have met has stressed the need for fundamental reform of the dental contract so that things can get done. Given that this Tory Government have been in place for 14 years, why will the Minister not commit herself to finally reforming the contract and providing the boost to dentistry that my constituents so desperately want to see?

[Victoria Atkins]

I think it is very courageous of any Labour Member of Parliament to talk about education, because we know just how dire the education results are in Labour-run Wales. Yes, I have committed to reform of the dental contract, and we will deliver these services immediately because we want to deliver results for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents as well as ours.

Pharmacy First

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend.

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

With so many of my constituents waiting a long time to see GPs, any boost to primary care capacity must be welcomed, so I thank the Minister for today’s announcement. The GPs and pharmacy staff I meet raise concerns about recruitment to open roles. What assurances can the Minister offer that this will not be another policy, like the childcare announcement, that lacks the workforce or sectoral strategy to really gain the full benefits?

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, our NHS long-term workforce plan intends to increase by 50% the number of registered pharmacists. That work is under way and includes increasing the number of pharmacy technicians.

NHS Dentistry

Alistair Strathern Excerpts

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alistair Strathern (Mid Bedfordshire) (Lab)]

As a man with a great fondness and enthusiasm for Irn-Bru and a habit of throwing my body on the line on the football pitch to make up for a lack of skill, it is fair to say that over the years I have had to rely quite a few times on fantastic NHS dental care. But, like for far too many of my constituents, those positive past experiences of NHS dentistry are exactly that—a thing of the past.

We have all heard today stories of constituents who have struggled to access dentist care when they needed it and struggled to pay for private care in the absence of NHS provision in their area. Whether they have been struck off as a patient over time or their NHS practice has gone completely private, our constituents are repeatedly paying the price for the continued failure to stop the rot in dentist provision. Just in the last week, I have had constituents contacting me to express their frustration and challenge in accessing routine dental appointments, with NHS dentists telling them they can only have emergency care. People are forced to wait for things to get worse just so they can afford to be seen. Another told me about the incredible cost they are now having to pay to drive to see an NHS dentist, having been pushed further and further afield as more and more practices near them have withdrawn eligibility. This should not be acceptable, but shamefully it is far too common. Last year nearly 800 people across Bedfordshire were admitted to accident and emergency units for tooth-related reasons. In the year before, 165 children in central Bedfordshire presented at hospitals requiring a tooth extraction: 165 young people had to go to hospital to receive treatment for conditions that should have been picked up months earlier. Across the country, nearly 5 million people were told when they last inquired that no appointment was available, either because the practice was not taking more patients or because it was fully booked.

Sadly, under the present Government this situation has become endemic, and what is so heartbreaking is that it is not a new issue. For some time, Members on both sides of the House have been sounding the alarm bell, but rather than working with professionals to bring about the changes that are needed, the Government have ignored them and just tweaked around the edges. The effect has been the continued decay of dental provision throughout the country. We are nearly a year on from the promise of a dental recovery plan which is yet to be published, but our NHS dentists need immediate support to alleviate the pressures they are facing and the pain their patients are suffering.

Shamefully, as we have already heard today, integrated care boards throughout the country—including mine—are struggling to make use of the money available to them because of the challenges posed by the current funding and contract structure for bringing dentists into the NHS fold. That cannot be acceptable to anyone in the Chamber who recognises the existence of a crisis that requires emergency action to put it right, and certainly requires a plan that involves a fixed date rather than some unspecified point in the future.

We need a Government who will finally prioritise this issue, take the necessary action to ensure that dentists are available to those who need them, and return the service to a better footing for all our constituents. We need incentives for new dentists to work in areas where there is the greatest need, we need 700,000 more urgent appointments for patients requiring, for instance, fillings and root canal treatment, and yes—we need supervised toothbrushing in schools for three to five-year-olds to target the root of some of these challenges. If Conservative Members have a problem with that, I dread to think what they will make of some of the things that are already happening in schools which are now teaching cooking, physical education and hygiene. All those subjects play an important part in our school system. When we are facing such a clear issue as the current state of dental care for young people, it is shocking to think that we could sit on our hands and not do our bit to try and support them.

As well as all that, we need the fundamental reform of the NHS dentists’ contract that will put the service back on to a good footing. Together, Labour Members have a plan to put dentistry back on track, but I hope all Members will agree that my constituents have already had to wait long enough just to have an MP who wants to do this job. As the Government drag out and drag out the date of the next general election, my constituents should not be having to wait for an election to see national change on this issue. Please, let us stop pushing that strategy further and further away. Let us stop turning to infighting and being obsessed with who our next leader will be, and agree together today to put something right. Labour has a plan to get NHS dentistry back on track, and I hope that Members in all parts of the House will back it today.