Reforms to NHS Dentistry

Mark Fletcher Excerpts

Thursday 27th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

I, too, extend my thanks to the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for this debate. A number of speakers have covered the general points around dentistry and the issues many of our constituencies are facing and have outlined many of the things that need to happen and need to be in the forthcoming action plan from the Government, so, rather than labour the point on those, I will focus on the matter facing my constituency.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) have mentioned the situation regarding Bupa and the 75 practices it is either closing or selling at present. One of them is in Bolsover town centre and the closure of this practice was announced with absolutely no consultation whatsoever. They were kind enough to give me 12 hours’ notice, which they seemed to be very proud of when I met them, but that is a completely insubstantial amount of time for people to prepare, and although the practice is not due to close until 23 June the situation has been exacerbated.

I had already been to see the Secretary of State last year about dentistry and my concerns about provision in Bolsover; I have spoken to Ministers about this on a number of occasions, and indeed raised it at Health questions previously with the Minister, as I did this week. The situation is now of great urgency, because Bolsover was already bottom of the regional league tables for dentistry provision, the worst in Derbyshire and one of the worst in the east midlands, and we will have no NHS practices accepting new adult patients once the Bupa practice is closed. The Minister is aware of that situation, because we have had a number of conversations this week, but I do not want Bolsover to be a dental desert.

I have already met the integrated care board for my region to start having conversations about what can be done for patients locally. The first port of call is to look at dispersal and see whether other practices can take patients on, perhaps using a different UDA figure and pricing structure for those patients. However, the BUPA practice is quite a large one and dispersal will be difficult, since a number of the other practices, as I have already alluded to, are not taking on patients. I have encouraged my ICB to look at all the options available to it and perhaps to be bold. My request to the Minister is that he commit to working with the ICB, with me, to ensure that we get some sort of solution quickly.

I will end with a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) alluded to earlier. Bolsover is very lucky to have new housing coming into the area, and it is helping the area, but the question mark for many who have lived there for a long time is this: what are the benefits of that new housing? What comes alongside it? We cannot have new housing without the appropriate infrastructure, whether that is roads—we have had plenty of questions about roads—school places, GP practices and additional GPs, or dentistry. One difficulty I have in justifying the development is that we are losing a dentist practice while gaining several thousand new homes. I strongly encourage the Government and my local authority to look at that situation in a more holistic way.