NHS Dentistry: South-west
Jayne Kirkham Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
I will not rehearse the numbers that Members have already given for the south-west, except to say that fewer than half the children in Cornwall have been seen by an NHS dentist in the past 12 months. That is down 13 percentage points from five years earlier. It is just getting worse and worse: people simply cannot get an NHS dentist now in the whole of Cornwall. It is impossible.
We are fortunate in that we have a new Government. We are looking at 700,000 new urgent appointments. Everybody recognises that the dental contract needs reforming, and there is a commitment to reform the contract. Obviously that will take time, so in the meantime we may need to look at what can be done locally.
In Cornwall, the commissioning of dentistry has been passed down to the integrated care board, which has done some quite innovative things. A surgery in Lostwithiel that was just about to hand back its contract went into bespoke negotiations so that the under-18s, the elderly and vulnerable people could retain their NHS dentist. There is the option, within the contract, for local ICBs to do more, to go into bespoke negotiations and maybe to salvage some things while we are waiting for the large renegotiation of the dental contract.
There are other things that I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to consider; I am sure he has done so. Could he say more about health hubs, about having more bespoke contracts and about how much power ICBs have to enter into those contracts? Will he look at things such as emergency dental vans, which I understand are a sticking plaster, but which have been used in some places?
NHS Dentistry: Rural Areas
Jayne Kirkham Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Sarah Gibson
I agree with the hon. Member. The disparity is clear. As he mentioned, rural areas are being hardest hit by our broken NHS dental contract system.
Unfortunately, there does not seem to be much hope on the horizon. Denplan tells me that 90% of dentists plan to reduce their NHS commitment in the next two years and that the UK has the lowest dentist-to-population ratio in the whole of Europe. Although all dentists are dedicated to improving the nation’s health, access to NHS dental services remains a persistent challenge under the current system, particularly in rural areas.
Jayne Kirkham (Truro and Falmouth) (Lab/Co-op)
In lieu of the dental contract being renegotiated, could something not be done by the local integrated care boards that commission dentistry to make special provision for local contracts when dentists are considering giving up contracts in the short term? That could be done now, in lieu of that renegotiation.