Spending Review: Health and Social Care
Debate between Karin Smyth and Caroline Voaden(3 days, 13 hours ago)
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Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers), I welcome the increased investment, and the attention that the new Government are giving to the NHS. I would like to turn our attention to dentistry. My constituency of South Devon is a dental desert. I welcome the announcement of 700,000 extra dental appointments, but we have lost three dental surgeries since the election last year, and more are on the brink. The Government have been in office for a year now, and have talked about reforming the dental contract with the NHS. If that contract is not reformed, we will lose so many dentists that we will never be able to catch up. How long will it take the Government to announce a newly reformed contract with NHS dentistry, so that we can start increasing the number of appointments, and saving the dentist surgeries that we have left?
Karin Smyth
The hon. Lady is right to highlight the shocking state that dentistry was left in by the last Government. They could have reformed that contract at any time over the past 14 years. We were ready to do that in 2010, but things worked out differently; we left office, and the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives between them did not reform the contract. The Minister for Care is working at pace to ensure that happens, and we will update the House as soon as possible.
Hospice Funding
Debate between Karin Smyth and Caroline Voaden(5 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Karin Smyth
I am delighted to support my hon. Friend in the work that she has been doing with St Michael’s and Demelza hospices. She is absolutely right to highlight that, and I hope that she will be able to meet the staff in the new year and discuss how they can best use some of this funding.
Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I wish you, Mr Speaker, and all the House staff, a very merry Christmas.
Following on from the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), next year I will be taking part in a strictly dancing competition for my local Rowcroft Hospice. However, I am pretty sure that, even if all the Members in this House sponsored me, I would not be able to raise the £225,000 needed by Rowcroft to cover the additional national insurance contribution payments that it will have to make. Will this extra funding, which is very welcome, be additional funding, or will it be just enough to cover the extra costs that have been imposed on the hospice sector through the increase in national insurance contributions in the recent Budget?
Karin Smyth
I have to say that dancing is more my style than marathon running, so I wish the hon. Lady luck with that. At least she did not ask me for any money. I refer her to my earlier answer: this is additional money to support the hospice sector. It is a £100 million boost for adult and children’s hospices to ensure that they have the best physical environment for care, and £26 million in revenue to support children and young people’s hospices. We look forward to working with the sector in order to best deploy that in the New Year.