Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(9 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Victoria Atkins
I sincerely thank my right hon. and learned Friend for raising this issue. As the Prime Minister set out on the steps of Downing Street last week, there are people whose ideology and dogma are in direct conflict with our country’s shared values. Just as we will not stand for that across the country, nor will I stand for it in our NHS. I have already written to NHS England and regulators, setting out their responsibilities and our expectations of them, and I can assure my right hon. and learned Friend that I will be looking into this issue with great urgency and great care.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Victoria Atkins)
I am committed to making our NHS faster, simpler and fairer for all, including families, which is why the Government have recently introduced baby loss certificates. Nothing can diminish the pain of losing a baby, but we hope that this formal recognition of a life lost can help families to live alongside their grief. Indeed, since we announced the launch some two weeks ago, more than 37,000 certificates have been requested by parents.
That same commitment to families is why we are rolling out Martha’s rule across England, giving patients and their families the automatic right to a rapid review of their case—24 hours a day, seven days a week. Families and carers know when something is not right or their loved one’s condition is deteriorating. Martha’s rule not only recognises this powerful instinct, but allows anyone concerned to act on it and to make sure that the NHS listens.
With your permission, Mr Speaker, for which I am very grateful, I would like to alert the House to a written ministerial statement and a detailed letter from NHS England that has been laid this morning. It addresses a historical issue whereby women who received radiotherapy above the waist to treat Hodgkin lymphoma, and who were therefore at a higher risk of breast cancer, were not given annual checks. Yesterday, the NHS wrote to the 1,487 women affected in order to inform them. We expect all women to be offered a scan within the next three months, and NHS England has established a helpline and briefed GPs and relevant charities. The vast majority of this group of women will already have been receiving screening on a three-yearly basis, but NHS England wants to ensure that they receive annual tests, in line with the clinical guidance.
I wanted to alert hon. Members to that because, with the letters having been sent out yesterday, it is perfectly possible—indeed, probable—that they will start to receive queries from their constituents. I will of course keep the House updated. I emphasise, however, that what I have given is a summary, and I would encourage hon. Members to look at the very detailed letter from NHS England in order to reassure their constituents that we are scooping up everybody we can to look after them at this very troubling time.
John Penrose
Like many people here, I was delighted by last month’s NHS dentistry recovery plan. How many new NHS dental appointments does the Secretary of State expect to be available in my constituency of Weston-super-Mare, and by when?
Victoria Atkins
I thank my hon. Friend for supporting our dental recovery plan. Indeed, he is one of many colleagues who campaigned hard for it. I am pleased to inform him that dental activity, as measured by courses of treatment, has increased by 15% on the previous year in his local integrated care board area, and our plan will support further increases to dental access through some 2.5 million additional appointments across the country, including in his constituency. The first measure, namely new patient premiums, went live on Friday, and we hope to have the results very soon.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Steve Barclay
During the pandemic, as the hon. Lady knows, the Government prioritised the clinically extremely vulnerable and significant investment went in there. We follow the guidance from the UK Health Security Agency about the right level of infection control. More widely, we need to look at what medicine is effective. If it relates to immunosuppressants, there was a big debate in summer 2022 about that issue and we keep the science under active review.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Neil O’Brien
My hon. Friend is right. The amount of NHS dentistry being delivered in his ICB has gone up in the last year, but we want to go further. The NHS has recently commissioned additional children’s orthodontic capacity within his ICB, but through the actions we are going to take, we will go further.
NHS Dentists: South-West England
John Penrose Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Elliot. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Chris Loder) on securing this debate on a vital issue for our region.
The issues with getting a new NHS dentist in the south-west are, sadly, all too well known. I have regularly been contacted by constituents who, when their current NHS dentist has retired, or in one case converted to a fully private practice, are unable to find a new practice accepting NHS patients. Last night, when I checked the NHS website for Torquay, there were no practices listed as accepting new NHS patients. Although many were listed as not having recently given an update, their position is easy to work out from the feedback I receive. As has already been set out, the issue is not limited to Torbay.
For me, there are two key areas of focus for tackling this issue: ensuring that more of the existing dental workforce and practices offer NHS services, including by accepting new patients for registration; and expanding the future dental capacity in the south-west through training and recruitment. On the first point, the key will be to ensure that contract arrangements are attractive and provide a viable proposition to those who will provide the services.
I am aware that NHS England is holding further discussions with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders for contract reforms that are planned to take place this year. The Government talk about aiming to reduce barriers to patients trying to access dentists by changing the arrangements for treatments such as root canals, improving patient communication and recruiting overseas dentists—although we should not always assume there is a pot of skilled labour available over an immigration bridge—so it would be good to hear more about the progress being made. Where it is not possible in some areas to secure new contracts with providers, will the Government consider looking at more direct provision? We simply cannot allow deserts of treatment to exist.
On expanding future capacity, the Association of Dental Groups has said that the key to easing the burden of the unmet need for dental services is simply going to be more dentists, which includes creating more training spaces. I am aware that in England the Government fund the training of around 800 dental students per year. In the past, the Government have said that places are capped to ensure that teaching, learning and assessment standards are maintained, as well as to ensure that there are enough high-quality placements for each student.
It is clear that the current level of supply is not going to meet future demand. There does, though, appear to be more capacity for training. In 2020, the cap on the number of dentistry school places in England was lifted, to accommodate the higher number of students meeting their university offers following changes to exam arrangements prompted by the covid-19 pandemic. Similarly, in 2021 the cap was adjusted again. That suggests that capacity is available.
In 2022, the Dental Schools Council called for an increase in the number of dental school places. The DSC presented three proposals agreed by the deans of UK dental schools to safeguard dental training and secure and improve the supply of future dentists by increasing dental school places. Again, that suggests that there is capacity to expand good-quality training here in the UK, ideally in the south-west.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential that dentistry, along with other medical disciplines, is included in the upcoming NHS staffing plan, which we all hope will involve a substantial increase in the number of people being trained at all grades of medical discipline, including dentistry?
Kevin Foster
Yes.
I look forward to the Minister’s response, and have two specific questions for him, in addition to those already raised. First, what progress is being made with renegotiating the contract, and what results is he expecting to see in the south-west this year from those renegotiations in terms of the increased accessibility of NHS dental services? Secondly, what plans does he have to create additional training spaces in the south-west, given that we know that where people train is where they are likely to stay and practise?
For too many in the south-west, NHS dentistry has become a service that is difficult to access and hard to register for. I hope that in his response the Minister will set out clearly the action we will see to get more dental practices to provide NHS services, and more dentists providing NHS services across the south-west region.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Sajid Javid
As the hon. Gentleman will know, all decisions are rightly made by Ministers. I agree about the importance of tackling smoking. The Government are committed to a smoke-free 2030, which is exactly why I commissioned the independent Khan review. I welcome its findings and we are carefully considering them.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)
The best way to improve access to NHS dental services nationally is through our reforms of the NHS dental contract, which will aim to pay dentists more fairly for their work. Specifically on Weston-super-Mare, a number of measures are taking place in Somerset to open up dental access there, including a nurse-led dental helpline to open up the available appointments.
John Penrose
I thank the Minister for her answer. Even before the pandemic, the NHS commissioned enough dentistry to cover only about half the population of England. Covid has massively increased backlogs and inequalities in Weston-super-Mare and many other parts of the country. Dentistry is now the No. 1 problem raised with Healthwatch, and four in five people say that they cannot find timely care. I agree with her that reforming the NHS dental contract is absolutely essential and urge her to redouble her efforts to fix it as fast as possible.
Maria Caulfield
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that the nub of the problem is the dental contract. Negotiations have started and the details are with the British Dental Association as we speak. We expect to make an announcement before the summer recess.
Oral Answers to Questions
John Penrose Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Hunt
I share the hon. Gentleman’s concerns about the way that NHS funding is allocated to different parts of the country. The allocation in my constituency is about the same as in his constituency, and I have long worried that things like age and rurality are not factored into the final amounts in the way that they need to be. However, in this case NHS England decided that if it was to follow precisely the ACRA recommendations, it would lead to higher growth for areas with better health outcomes and lower growth, or even cuts, for areas with less good outcomes, which it thought would be inconsistent with its responsibility to reduce health inequalities. That is why it is conducting a fundamental review, which it says it hopes will inform the next set of allocations for 2013-14.
John Penrose (Weston-super-Mare) (Con)
The Secretary of State will be aware that in my area of north Somerset, in Weston-super-Mare, the actual allocations versus the intended amounts of cash which should arrive with us based on the existing formula, are well below what they should be; so even without changing the funding formula, we are still getting dramatically less cash than we should. I urge the Secretary of State to look at that swiftly and see what can be done, within the existing spending envelopes, to make the allocations fairer.
Mr Hunt
As I said, I share my hon. Friend’s concerns about the way funding works at the moment. We are in a very difficult situation because if we were to move closer to the formula proposed by ACRA—I am sure he would agree with me that it is right that it is done independently of Ministers, and in this case it is done under NHS England—it would mean cuts in real terms for the budgets in other areas. Given the pressures overall in the NHS, that was obviously a decision that NHS England was very reluctant to make.