Access to Dental Services: West Sussex Debate

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Department: Department of Health and Social Care

Access to Dental Services: West Sussex

Desmond Swayne Excerpts
Tuesday 16th June 2026

(1 month, 2 weeks ago)

Westminster Hall
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Alison Griffiths Portrait Alison Griffiths
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In Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and in significant parts of Chichester, we have coastal areas. In our manifesto, the Conservative party pledged golden handshakes to attract dentists to coastal constituencies, because we know that is one of the issues. Could you tell please me what specific proposals you have to attract dentists to coastal constituencies?

Desmond Swayne Portrait Sir Desmond Swayne (in the Chair)
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Order. I haven’t any proposals.

Stephen Kinnock Portrait Stephen Kinnock
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We will be publishing the data on the golden hellos in August, along with all the other data. There is a time lag from the end of the financial year to when we have collated all the data—it takes a few months—so there will be data in August on a number of issues we have discussed today. The challenge of golden hellos is that we run into problems around the contract, incentivising people to do NHS dentistry, and getting people to live and work in certain parts of the country when they might be more attracted to a big city. We are aware of the challenges for coastal areas.

On the Portsmouth announcement, I have never driven from Portsmouth to Chichester, but I understand it is about a 20-minute drive, depending on the traffic—