Draft Human Medicines (Amendments relating to Registered Dental Hygienists, Registered Dental Therapists and Registered Pharmacy Technicians) Regulations 2024

Andrew Gwynne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2024 General Committees

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Mr Hollobone. I want to start by echoing the Minister’s comments about pharmacies and pharmacists; I will even go so far as to thank the Prime Minister’s mother. We rely on our pharmacists to do an awful lot and Labour supports the concept of Pharmacy First. We think that pharmacies could and should play an even greater role in providing healthcare services in the closest places where people can most easily access them. In our towns, cities and villages, that is often on the high street, in our pharmacies. We would roll out more services to pharmacies and have proposals to do that, should we be fortunate enough to form the next Government.

I have to say, though, that the least said about NHS dentistry the better. I do not recognise the Minister’s description of her dentistry recovery plan. It does not go far enough for us. We want to see a proper, concerted effort in dentistry and in getting NHS dentistry back to where it should be. Even the professional bodies say that the dentistry recovery plan does not go far enough, and we echo their concerns. We can and should do more.

We support the overall terms of the draft regulations, particularly the measures on pharmacy technicians and dental hygienists. In particular, we think that dental hygienists are a useful tool to deliver timely and quality care to patients where it is safe and suitable for them to do so. The dental profession is supportive of the intention to enable dental hygienists and dental therapists to supply and administer the vast majority of the medicines listed in the regulations.

However, the inclusion of two medicines on the list—minocycline and nystatin—was not supported by the British Dental Association or the College of General Dentistry. These bodies tell me that for a number of reasons, including antimicrobial resistance and, in the case of minocycline, efficacy, they are not recommended in any national clinical guidelines and their use in dentistry is no longer accepted practice. Will the Minister be able to explain whether the concerns of key dental stakeholders were taken into account when the decision was made to retain these two drugs on the list? Will she also assure us that there has been full and proper consultation with both the British Dental Association and the College of General Dentistry on ensuring that the regulations are compliant with both national practice and existing clinical guidelines?

Efforts to increase the skill mix in our NHS dentistry workforce and across pharmacy more generally are welcome, but the Minister will forgive me for thinking that we need to go much further than technical tweaks if we are to reverse the crisis in which NHS dentistry finds itself. I know that she wants to do more—I want her to do more—but it will likely be left to the next Labour Government to fix NHS dentistry. We will support the regulations, and I hope that the Minister can reassure us about the medicines that are included in the list when they perhaps should not be.