Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Andrew Selous

Thursday 16th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I reinforce what the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) said about the general welcome in the House for the movement towards equality and fairness. We have had it on ordination; we now have it on same-sex relationships up to a point. Through my hon. Friend, I ask those who are disappointed with this movement forward to think of the pain that they have caused by resisting the change for so many people, whether by sex or orientation, over the past decades.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful, as always, to the Father of the House for his wise reflections on these matters. He is right that this has been a difficult and painful period across the Church. I very much regret that, as he does. I hope we can move forward together in love, truth and unity on these matters.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Andrew Selous

Thursday 20th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I speak as a supporter of WATCH, the Women and the Church group. The Church Commissioners should understand that either the Church of England gets rid of what ought to have been temporary exemptions from the Equality Act 2010 or Parliament will do that for it. Does my hon. Friend understand that other MPs who are interested in full equality for women would like to meet the Church Commissioners before we consider what other action we might take?

[Andrew Selous]

I have very clearly heard what my hon. Friend the Father of the House and indeed the very respected Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) have just said. The Church will have heard that as well and we are of course available for meetings at any time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Andrew Selous

Thursday 9th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

I am not sure this is the right place to advertise virtue or claim vice.

Can I put it to my hon. Friend that the Church of England Children’s Society 50 years ago supported the social entrepreneur Bob Holman in establishing family centres? Can we praise the Church and all its parishes for the way they help to support the confidence and competence of parents, who often go through difficult situations?

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to the Father of the House for reminding us of that important fact and of what the Church has done in the past, and I hope he will be equally supportive of what our right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) is doing with her fantastic initiative on family hubs. That is an important continuation of that early work.

Equal Marriage: Church of England

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)]

The whole House should be grateful to the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) for the way he has raised this.

We recognise that our Second Church Estates Commissioner, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), is a channel of peace rather than of conflict, but may I say to him, as I said to his predecessor over the appointment of women bishops, that this House will not put up with being held up by one third of one part of the General Synod?

Members may wish to look at the Library briefing from 11 August 2022 to see that the enabling Act of 1919, which established a General Synod as a way to stop Bills having to go through all the formal stages in the House of Commons, can be amended and that some recent legislation wrongly gave permission for flying bishops and people under them to refuse to recognise women ordained in the Church of England.

We are coming to a stage, on that and on this, where the Church of England needs to wake up. I commend to it the establishment of a commission similar to the Chadwick commission, and for it to ask itself how to get out of this dilemma. Does it want to solve it, or will it leave it to us to do that for it?

[Andrew Selous]

I have great respect, of course, for what the Father of the House says, and I know that many Members in this House take a close interest in what happens in the General Synod of the Church of England, but it goes equally the other way. Today I commit to the Father of the House, and to all right hon. and hon. Members here, to feed back to the General Synod fully and frankly not only the views of the House, as have been set out here, but the strength of feeling on these issues. That is my role as Second Church Estates Commissioner.

Access to NHS Dentistry

Debate between Peter Bottomley and Andrew Selous

Thursday 10th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Like other colleagues, I pay tribute to my local dentists and the whole team of dental staff who support them. They do amazing work, and almost all of them went above and beyond during the pandemic.

I have to express a bit of concern about the information that the Minister’s officials may be feeding her. I got a letter on 16 December from NHS East of England direct commissioning, which said: “Having conducted a search of dental practices in the Leighton Buzzard area, I can confirm that of the 47 dental practices, six are accepting new NHS patients.” The letter goes on to say that there are 30 others that have not been heard from. I received an email only this morning from a couple in Leighton Buzzard who said that they have given up trying to find an NHS dentist. A lady in Dunstable wrote yesterday to say that the local waiting list is two years. Another constituent wrote to say that they had been turned away by emergency dentists to which NHS 111 had referred them.

[Sir Peter Bottomley]

Would it be too difficult for the NHS to have a list, for every constituency, of every dental practice and its situation? That way, the NHS, patients and MPs would know what the situation is, and we could change that situation.

[Andrew Selous]

The Father of the House is absolutely right; the point was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) earlier. I do not think that the data are nearly good enough, and I do not see how Ministers can have proper oversight if we do not actually know what is happening.

When the letter of 16 December says, “having conducted a search of dental practices in the Leighton Buzzard area,” I fear that the person who wrote it sat at their desk and went on Google to find out. I do not think they actually came to the town. I do not think that they walked around and spoke to the dentists, the local Healthwatch, or the people in the town. How can the Minister have accurate information if what we get from the officials—that was from an official letter from the NHS to me—does not actually reflect what is happening in the town?

We are struggling now, but my area, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller), is scheduled to have another 14,000 houses; they have been consented and are being built now. I have a major campaign on ensuring that general practice capacity keeps up with major new housing developments. How can we do that for dentists too if we already have a deficit? Will the money follow those huge new housing developments in many of our constituencies? We need answers on that too. If the Minister is able to give further information on that, either when she replies, or perhaps by letter afterwards, that would be really helpful.

We have heard from many colleagues about the issue of children’s teeth. I am informed that tooth decay is the No. 1 reason for hospital admissions of young children. That shows the importance of prevention and getting it right, and the whole issue of sugary drinks. I recognise the help that fluoridisation gives, but children’s oral health is a huge issue.

One or two colleagues—including, I think, the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell)—mentioned older people’s dental care; I had a debate on that in the Chamber. It is a subject that we often do not talk enough about, particularly with people in care homes. Do the managers of those homes ensure that staff help the patients to brush their teeth? What about the oral care of people receiving domiciliary care? Is that budgeted in? It is serious; it can lead to malnutrition and all sorts of problems. There was a major Care Quality Commission report, which was only on the care home sector, in June 2019, called “Smiling matters”. It would be good to have an update from the Minister on how we are doing in ensuring that older people’s dental care is also taken proper care of.

We know that the current contract, about which most of us have been complaining, was introduced in 2006—so quite some time ago—but back in June 2009, there was an excellent independent review about what we needed to do about it by Professor Jimmy Steele. I will quote from one paragraph of it:

“Through the NHS, dentistry could take a huge step forward but in order to do that, one concept is critical. So long as we see value for taxpayers’ money as measured by the production of fillings, dentures, extractions or crowns, rather than improvements in oral health, it will be difficult to escape the cycle of intervention and repair that is the legacy of a different age.”

I think that the Steele report got it right. However, that was under the previous Administration, in June 2009. I am told that the work on reform started in 2011, and yet here we are, in 2022. I think that what we are all saying to the Minister—who is diligent and I know cares about these matters—is that we really need some urgency.

On the number of dentists, perhaps slightly surprisingly, and perhaps contrary to some of what we have heard today, I had an email yesterday from the British Dental Association saying,

“We don’t really have a shortage of dentists in England—the number of dentists registered with the General Dental Council is in fact almost 2,000 higher now than it was in 2018. The key problem is that these dentists increasingly don’t want to work in the NHS—almost 1,000 quit the NHS in the last year alone.”

The email goes on to say that if dentists move to private provision, they do not actually earn any more. They are not just leaving NHS work because of the money but because they cannot look after their patients properly under the contract. It says that it is soul destroying, chasing these NHS units of dental activity. It is stressful and demoralising, so what do they do for the same money—not for more money? They go—this is what the British Dental Association says—to private practice, where they can spend more time with their patients, providing the level of care that their patients deserve.

We are not doing it right. To try to guard taxpayers’ money through efficiency, we are driving dentists out of the service. We are measuring the wrong things. I do not think that we are measuring enough, as we do not seem to have enough measurement, and where we are measuring, we are measuring the wrong things. It is not possible to get improvement unless we have the correct data. I have confidence in the Secretary of State and in the Minister, but I think we are all saying that this is urgent and please get on with it with proper reforms.