NHS Dentistry

Debate between Catherine West and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 9th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am going to make some progress.

I am very pleased that, subject to a public consultation which will be published shortly, we have secured funding to expand water fluoridation schemes across the north-east of England. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Ilford North may be interested to know why we have identified the north-east, given that he read out so many constituency names in his speech. The north-east was chosen because natural fluoride levels there are among the lowest in the country, and the proportion of five-year-olds with teeth extracted because of tooth decay is among the highest. We have wanted to address that very real health inequality to ensure that more than 1.6 million people in the area can benefit from this expansion, subject, as I have said, to a public consultation.

Supervised tooth brushing has been raised. That has indeed been proven to drive down oral health inequalities, which is why we have already introduced a toolkit that local authorities are using to introduce supervised tooth brushing across schools, nurseries and family hubs. We have been clear that we want to see that happening in more areas. I would encourage any colleague who is concerned about that, rather than waiting for some mythical date in the future, to ask our local authorities whether they are using these toolkits, because they are freely available, and they can and should put them in place.

[Catherine West]

The Secretary of State rightly talks about prevention, but what about the opposite, where rates of oral cancer have gone up because prevention has not been in place? What assessment has she made? If she does not have the data to hand, will she write to me with the assessment that the Department of Health and Social Care has made of the link between failure on prevention and cancer?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady, and particularly for the constructive tone of her intervention, because she is right. This is not simply about teeth health; it is also about the conditions that dentists check for—probably without anyone quite realising that they are doing so. I will take the hon. Lady up on her invitation to write to her on the figures, but that is why we are looking at health inequalities across the country and, importantly, focusing on encouraging dentists to re-register with the NHS if they have left, because it is vital for tackling much wider health conditions in addition to the pain and discomfort that tooth decay can bring.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Catherine West and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 7th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

There we go; what is going on with the Order Paper today?

It is right that everyone contributes to sustainable public finances in a fair way. The autumn statement tax reforms mean those with the broadest shoulders contribute the most by ensuring that energy companies pay their fair share, and by making the personal tax system fairer through changes to the income tax additional rate threshold and reforms to dividends and capital gains tax allowances.

[Catherine West]

Researchers from the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick have found that ending the UK’s antiquated non-dom rules could gain as much as £3 billion a year for the Exchequer. At a time when the Conservative party wishes to put up taxes on working people, will the Minister at least commit to publishing the Government’s own estimate of the cost of the non-dom policy, so that small businesses and big businesses can be on an even playing field?

[Victoria Atkins]

If I may correct the hon. Member, in fact, individuals on, for example, an average salary of £28,000 will pay £900 less income tax and national insurance in 2027-28 compared with the personal allowance and personal thresholds rising in line with inflation since 2010-11. These are concrete measures we have taken to ensure that the spread of tax burdens is borne by those with the broadest shoulders. On her point about non-doms, of course we keep all tax policies under review, but I again emphasise that our economy needs to be open to people around the world who come to the UK to do business. What is more, they pay UK taxes on their UK incomes, which last year was worth £7.9 billion.

Prisons Strategy

Debate between Catherine West and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I encourage the House to see this strategy as sitting alongside the drugs strategy, because treatment and recovery for prisoners is key to cutting addiction and reoffending. We are committed to a meaningful journey of recovery within prison, and we want abstinence-based treatment to be the longer-term goal. Whatever work we achieve inside prison walls must continue once prisoners are released, to give them the best chance of leading fresh lives.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The House was shocked to its core when we learned of the stillbirth of an 18-year-old mother’s baby at Bronzefield. What specific recommendations does the Minister have on antenatal care? She talks about healthcare for people affected by drugs and mental ill health, but will she please set out from the Dispatch Box what we have learned not to do or to do better for pregnant women?

[Victoria Atkins]

I am mindful of your call for shorter answers, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I cannot set out in detail everything we are doing, but I hope I can give the hon. Lady confidence that there is a vast programme of work to ensure such cases do not happen again. We are providing specific support for pregnant women, including a multidisciplinary individual care plan. We have introduced pregnancy officers and mother and baby officers in every single women’s prison. We do not want that terrible circumstance to happen again, and I genuinely believe it will be prevented through this work.

Violent Crime

Debate between Catherine West and Victoria Atkins

Monday 17th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am a little confused, because earlier the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) urged me to be angry. I am sorry that the hon. Lady takes issue with that. I am not angry at all, in that this has always been my approach. I have prosecuted serious organised crime and I have seen the terrible aftermath of these gangs through my work in the criminal justice system. This requires a methodical, cool-headed analysis of the evidence. The reason I read out the list was to give a flavour to the House of the range of activities that is happening on a national and local basis to tackle knife crime. Of course, there is so much more that local authorities are doing, as we have heard from hon. Members already, but, to my mind, this is about a methodical and hard-headed approach to looking at the evidence to see what works. That is precisely why I assume that she will welcome the emphasis we are putting on the evaluation of the various charitable projects that will be funded through the Youth Endowment Fund. We have made that an absolute requirement of the way in which the fund is run, so that we can discover what works and what does not work and invest in those projects that do.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

May I impress on the Minister the feeling that an Opposition Back-Bench MP has when attending a vigil of thousands of young people and are somehow made to feel responsible for the loss of a loved one? There is this utter sense of helplessness when you have had Backbench debates, when you have had a one-to-one with the Secretary of State—who by the way is not in his place today on this most important of topics—and when you have had a one-to-one with the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government to talk about early intervention. You have ticked every box: you have had the community meeting; you have had the listening meeting; and then you get the reply. This is after you have been to the vigil and held in your arms the mother who is crying, and the sister of the young man who was stabbed. The mother says, “Dear Catherine, my youngest son has been mugged twice in three months. What are you doing about it?” We feel the frustration, the anger and the tragedy of it. Please, we must do something much more than just put in place programmes and strategies. We must look at the £1 billion taken away and the £1 million being given back. It just does not add up.

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I know that constituency colleagues—constituency MPs—will be at the forefront of having to deal with the effects not just of the immediate family of those affected, but of the wider community. I do understand that. It is why I always say that the most important part of my role is meeting the families of victims. It seems to me that every time we meet across the House and every time we meet the victims, we learn more about the complexity of the causes and what we can do to help. I personally have benefited from the meetings that I have had in informing our work.

Resourcing is an issue that Opposition Members raise continuously, and I understand why, but we cannot escape the fact that the key driver of serious violence is the drugs market, and it is the serious organised crime gangs that are driving this. That is why our national efforts through the National Crime Agency are so critical.

The hon. Lady will also welcome the fact that the Mayor of London has set up the serious violence taskforce with the 300 dedicated officers who will go to hotspot areas. If there are issues with operational matters on the ground, I please ask her to raise them with him, because just as I benefit from hearing from colleagues across the House, I am sure that he too benefits from hearing from constituency MPs.

G4S: Immigration Removal Centres

Debate between Catherine West and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

The need for G4S drastically to improve its whistleblowing procedures was part of the action plan. As I have set out already, G4S has taken various steps, including embedding the culture of making available telephone numbers that enable people to raise their concerns confidentially and training staff to be “speak out” champions—promoting and embedding the expectation that staff will speak out. In addition, body-worn cameras help to take the burden from people who may be worried about reporting. Of course, the independent monitoring board has an important role in ensuring that there are people who inspect and are monitoring the behaviour of the staff and organisations in this world.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

There was a criminal investigation following the scandal highlighted by “Panorama”. Will the Minister tell us what happened following that investigation? Have people been punished? May I also press her on the question of this House having a vote, so that this country can be brought in line with other European nations where there is a 28-day statutory limit on the time for which people can be held in such facilities? Far too many people detained in such facilities should be in the community, not in detention centres.

[Victoria Atkins]

On the hon. Lady’s query about police investigations, allegations were passed to the police. I understand that there is one case where an investigation is ongoing. I cannot assist the House further on that, I am afraid. Indeed, given that that is the case, perhaps I should not be commenting on it anyway.

On the wider point about time limits, this is a matter that the Home Office reviews and looks into very carefully. The vast majority of people who challenge the requirement to remove them under their right to remain status are in the community already. The fact that most detainees left detention in under 29 days should, I hope, offer her some comfort, but of course we must always look at how we can improve that figure further.