Dental Training College: East Anglia

Peter Aldous Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree entirely. There can be collaboration between the university in Norwich and the University of Suffolk, which is based in Ipswich. People can start training in Norwich and, once they are qualified, have career and professional development taken care of by the proposed unit in Ipswich. I will come on to that in further detail.

To return to the plans of the University of East Anglia, its idea is that students would work in the community for at least one day a week throughout their five-year training course. In that way, dental students will increase the capacity of associated NHS practices right from the get-go. Too often, it is suggested that a dental training school is too long term to solve the problems now. In a sense, it is, of course, but under this plan, we would have increased capacity right from the first year of the students’ five-year course.

There are more benefits, too: students would not only increase the capacity, but develop employment relationships locally, increasing their stickiness, and provide training income to stretched NHS practices. For that reason, MPs from North Norfolk, North West Norfolk, Mid Norfolk, South Norfolk and Norwich North all support the proposal. If there were an East Norfolk constituency, I am sure that that Member would support it as well.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I speak as an MP with a foot in both camps: I am a Suffolk MP but I also represent the Norfolk and Waveney integrated care system area. Does my hon. Friend agree, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) said, that it is very important that the two proposals being put together by the University of Suffolk and the University of East Anglia are collaborative and worked on together, so that they come through with a solution for the whole of East Anglia?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The only phrase that I would pick him up on is that he has “a foot in both camps”. I do not think there should be two camps. This is an East Anglian solution, whereby the proposals are complementary and, in time, they should both be implemented.

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. There is a further point to be made about the collaboration between the University of East Anglia and the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, because they also have the Norwich research park co-located. I am thinking particularly of the Quadram Institute, the sole focus of which is world-leading research on the gut microbiota. I cannot pretend to know exactly what the gut microbiota are, but I know that they start with the mouth. There is huge capacity for proper, hard research in the area, and it could be assisted by a dental training school in Norwich. That is the first solution.

The second solution, which is also needed, is for the dental school in Norwich to complement the University of Suffolk’s plans to build a centre for dental development in Ipswich to support further career development in the region, attracting and retaining newly qualified dentists. My hon. Friends the Members for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill), for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Ipswich (Tom Hunt) and others have all pushed for that.

The truth is that we need both to attract qualified dentists in the short term and to find a long-term solution to the wider training problem. It may be that an assessment is made nationally that there is no need for additional dental training seats, but people are human. We have to look beyond the empirical analysis and recognise that training needs to be offered in a location of real shortage. That location is East Anglia, and Norfolk in particular.

As a Conservative, I believe that people should have power over their own lives and that communities should not be dictated to by national Government. Rather, they should be empowered to come up with their own solutions to their local needs. We know what the problem is, and we have a solution to fix it locally; we just need the Government to trust the people to let us get on and do it.

We simply need more dentists and dental technicians in East Anglia. We recognise that budgets are tight and that timings may have to be stretched. We accept that short-term fixes are sometimes more powerful arguments in politics than long-term solutions. We simply ask the Minister to agree to meet the University of East Anglia team to learn at first hand how we can make East Anglian dentistry better, and to be inspired by their practical vision.

[Peter Aldous]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I cannot quite tell whether the hon. Gentleman wishes to contribute.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

I will contribute very quickly, Madam Deputy Speaker, if you will give me the opportunity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) has set out a great vision of a future in which East Anglia, Norfolk and Suffolk have high-quality dentistry schools. That is great, but we need a bridge to get to that future, because two dentistry schools will take some time to set up. Does he agree that we need to look at other strands to address the crisis in NHS dentistry in East Anglia, including recruitment and retention in the short term, making it easier for people from overseas to come and work in local dentistry; contract reform, which I think my hon. Friend referred to; a fair, long-term funding settlement; a focus on prevention; and improved local accountability through the fledgling integrated care systems?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful—

--- Later in debate ---

[Jerome Mayhew]

Thank you for that clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Does my hon. Friend agree that all those aspects are very important, but that perhaps there is another proposed solution that he has not mentioned? As we have learned today, there are inducement payments for teachers in special areas that are struggling to recruit. Perhaps we could apply the same approach to dentists in special areas that are struggling to recruit.

[Peter Aldous]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and apologise for hijacking his debate. Yes, I agree wholeheartedly. This is a multifaceted challenge; there is no one solution and no one golden bullet. We need to address all the points, and he is right to raise that one.