Oral Answers to Questions
Dan Aldridge Excerpts(2 days, 8 hours ago)
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Richard Baker (Glenrothes and Mid Fife) (Lab)
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
After 14 years of Tory neglect and incompetence, NHS dentistry in England has been left in a parlous state. Tooth decay is the most common reason why children aged five to nine are admitted to hospital, and 28% of the country—13 million people—have an unmet need for dentistry. Rescuing NHS dentistry will not happen overnight. We will expand the provision of urgent dental appointments across the country, and we are working with the sector to reform the dental contract in order to increase access and incentivise more NHS care.
Stephen Kinnock
Responsibility for dental services in Scotland is of course a matter for the Scottish Government, but Governments across the UK work together to spread best practice and deliver on our common goals. The Scottish National party Government have an extra £1.5 billion this year, and £3.4 billion next year, through the Barnett formula. I hope that they will prioritise health, including dentistry, and undo some of the damage that they themselves have done to dentistry in Scotland.
Dan Aldridge
Some 37% of five-year-olds in Weston-super-Mare have enamel or dental decay—a figure well above the national average. The Better Health North Somerset team does amazing work to promote good oral health, but regular dentist check-ups are the oral health silver bullet. Will the Minister explain and outline the work he is doing to ensure that children in Weston and Worle and across the country get the dentistry service that they so desperately need?
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise this vital issue. Prevention is of course always better than cure, so I am very proud of the fact that we are introducing supervised toothbrushing for three to five-year-olds in the most deprived communities and where there is the most unmet need. We are also working to sort out the NHS contracts so we can ensure that children get the care they need.
NHS Dentistry: South-west
Dan Aldridge Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Richard Foord
I am appalled to hear about those examples from my hon. Friend. The really disappointing thing is that some of the expense of secondary care could be avoided with a little more investment upstream in primary care.
There is a clear disparity between the work that dentists do in the NHS and in private practice. There is so much more emphasis in private practice on preventive care. We need to see that same level of preventive work happening in the NHS.
At an Adjournment debate last week in the main Chamber, it struck me that although many of us were there seeking to draw attention to NHS dentistry, not a single Conservative MP attended. I thank the Minister in the new Government for showing more commitment to NHS dentistry than the last administration, yet we have further to go. The Government prioritised the NHS in the Budget, allocating it an additional £25.7 billion. However, we needed more reference to dentistry in the Budget. The Labour party’s manifesto talked about a dental rescue plan that would provide 700,000 more appointments and, most critically, focus on the retention of dentists in the NHS. We urgently need that.
We urgently need a dental rescue package to bring dentists back to the NHS, particularly in the south-west, where we have a dental training school in Plymouth. We understand that dentists, once trained, often stay where they went to university, so we need more dentists to be attracted to the south-west and to stay once they are there.
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
It is important to look at the role of public health in local government as well. Better Health North Somerset has a great programme led by Catherine Wheatley that is all about promoting oral health, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned, in early years and for children and young people. One thing I have noticed is that what works and good practice is not often shared between integrated care boards across local areas. With the strength of feeling here, demonstrated by the amount of south-west MPs that have attended this debate, there is a real opportunity for us to collaborate and share what works. That would be really useful.
Richard Foord
I agree. One way in which we can share best practice is by thinking about not only training places, but the recognition of qualifications. After the UK’s exit from the European Union, we saw a breakdown in the number of EU dentists wanting to stay or being attracted here. With fewer eastern European dentists, in the south-west of England, for example, we need to look again at dental qualifications and whether there are some dentist qualifications we might recognise that might make it more attractive to be a practising dentist in the UK.
The rural south-west of England needs to be able to expect the same level of NHS dentistry provision that we see in urban areas across the country. Will the Minister commit to the reform of NHS dentistry so that constituents such as Mike and Shirley do not have to go into the red or forfeit heating their homes to get dental care that avoids them going to acute hospitals such as the Royal Devon and Exeter hospital at Exeter?
Income Tax (Charge)
Dan Aldridge Excerpts(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Esther McVey (Tatton) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Juliet Campbell) on her maiden speech and her personal story. I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak in today’s Budget debate on fixing the NHS and reforming public services. However, the truth is that this Budget’s smash and grab on the UK’s businesses means that the money will not be there to pay for the excellent public services this country requires.
Labour has never understood the concept of private enterprise and businesses paying for public services, and that it is only with a thriving private sector that the country can have the public services it wants and needs. Make no mistake: this Budget will be catastrophic for the economic health of this country. It is the biggest tax-raising Budget in British history, and it will turn out to be the longest suicide note in Labour’s political history, too.
The Budget is socialism at its worst: high taxes, high spending and massive debt. [Interruption.] Labour Members are laughing, but this is massive debt for future generations. This Budget is anti-business, anti-farmer, anti-aspiration, anti-wealth creation and anti-worker. Yes, anti-worker. Despite all of Labour’s promises before the general election, the Government are taxing workers as they raise national insurance contributions for employers.
This begs the question: do the Chancellor and the Prime Minister not know how the economy works? They certainly do not know how business works. Not one of the current bunch of Cabinet Ministers has ever set up a business. No wonder they do not have a clue about national insurance contributions.
For clarity, both the independent Office for Budget Responsibility and the Institute for Fiscal Studies have said that 80% of the employer national insurance rises will be paid for by the workers through lower wages and reduced employment levels. No wonder Labour Members have now gone silent.
The Chancellor’s raid on the unfairest tax of all, inheritance tax, will double the number of estates that have to pay it and, disgracefully, will make it virtually impossible for family farmers to pass on their business to the next generation. Farmers are most definitely working people, just in case Labour Members do not know. This Budget will be disastrous for our rural areas and for the country’s food security, and all because of good old-fashioned socialist envy.
Esther McVey
No, I will carry on, thank you very much.
In addition to huge tax rises, this Budget will have an eye-watering impact on the country’s debt. Debt interest payments will be more than £100 billion a year, every year, and will reach an astonishing £120 billion by the end of the decade. To put that into context—
Dan Aldridge (Weston-super-Mare) (Lab)
It is privilege to serve in this Parliament, and I am immensely proud to speak in support of the Budget, the Chancellor, and her remarkable team. As someone raised by strong, brave, and kind women, I cannot in good faith ignore the significance of having a woman lead the charge to rectify the economic instability left by the men before her. This Budget lays the foundation for a fairer, more productive economy, and aims to fix the very bedrock of our society. It is genuinely inspiring to see how the Chancellor’s team has embraced the challenge of balancing both the big picture of reform and national renewal, and the critical details that support those most vulnerable to economic shifts.
The investment outlined in the Budget cannot come soon enough, especially in constituencies such as mine, where average earnings are nearly £7,500 below the UK average. My sister is a nurse at Weston general hospital at the heart of my constituency, and as a family we know the true weight of the crisis in healthcare. Indeed, last week my mother, who has Parkinson’s, fell over. We waited for nine or 10 hours, and eventually ended up dragging her into the car. There was no dignity in that, and that is the state we have been left with.
For us, if Labour had not won the election, healthcare free at the point of use would have been at risk of disappearing forever. Thankfully, under the Labour Government the NHS has been given a vital eleventh-hour reprieve. The £22.6 billion investment promised in the Budget will not only prevent further decline, but actively rebuild our health services. For Weston general and our GP surgeries, that means more appointments, long-overdue maintenance and improvements, and a sense of hope for our community. The Budget is not just about holding back the tide of decline; it is about building a dam to protect the future. It is progressive, targeted investment where it is needed most.
In Weston-super-Mare, increasing the minimum wage will see nearly 4,000 workers in North Somerset up to £1,400 better off each year, and with £1.6 billion allocated for road maintenance, we can start to tackle the huge backlog of potholes that plague Weston, Worle, and everywhere between. The £6.7 billion investment in education will mean better funding for Weston’s schools and colleges, and the £1 billion uplift for special educational needs, disabilities and alternative provision, is a particularly welcome change for many families in my constituency, and will begin a much-needed reform of SEND provision. Although we know it will take time properly to address the crisis in local government funding that we inherited, £1.3 billion of new grant funding will increase resources for North Somerset council, supporting essential services for our communities.
The Budget delivers on why we were elected: to tackle the cost of living crisis, get our NHS back on its feet, and lay the foundation for an economy that not only grows, but does so in a way that builds stronger, healthier and more resilient communities. When people see the changes in our hospitals, surgeries, schools and roads, they will once again believe that government can be a force for good. This is just the beginning of our journey towards a fairer, more hopeful future.