Dementia Care
Rebecca Smith Excerpts(5 days ago)
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Caroline Voaden (South Devon) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered dementia care.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this important debate and Members for supporting it, as well as the charities and organisations that have provided material. Dementia is undoubtedly one of the most urgent health and care challenges facing our society, and I know that most of us in this Chamber will know someone affected by it. My family is currently battling it on two fronts. My confident, witty, generous father-in-law is now almost unrecognisable as the man he used to be. He is lucky to be living in a lovely care home where he receives the best care possible, but the decision to move him there was heartbreaking. My brilliant, funny cousin, always the life and soul of family parties, was diagnosed far too early with frontotemporal dementia, which is likely to affect her ability to communicate over time—a particularly cruel diagnosis for someone so young. Watching people we love become confused by the world around them, unable to communicate and fading away from us while so physically present is heart-wrenching. Dementia has to be one of the cruellest conditions for those afflicted and for those supporting them.
As we are neatly placed between Dementia Week and Carers Week, it is fitting that we should discuss this condition with which 900,000 people in the UK are living, most over the age of 65. Dementia is now the leading cause of death in the UK, and while its scale is national, its impact is deeply local and personal. It is already widespread as our population ages, and that number is expected to rise sharply. According to NHS England, one in 11 people over the age of 65 has dementia, and that rises to one in six for those over 80. In Devon, which has one of the oldest populations in England, this issue is not just coming; it is already here. Unless we act now to improve diagnosis, care and support, we will fail tens of thousands of families in our communities.
A timely diagnosis is not just about putting a name to a condition; it is also the essential first step towards accessing care, planning for the future and, increasingly, receiving treatment. New disease-modifying drugs for Alzheimer’s offer real hope, but only if the disease is caught early and diagnosed accurately. In October 2023, the all-party parliamentary group on dementia published a report highlighting the significant regional disparities in dementia diagnosis across England. The findings were stark. While Stoke-on-Trent had the highest diagnosis rate, at 90%, the South Hams—much of which lies in my constituency of South Devon—had the lowest rate nationally, at just 44%.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
As a fellow South Hams representative, I wonder whether the hon. Lady would agree that the Government’s lack of focus and targets for dementia diagnosis is having a particular impact on rural constituencies such as ours, given that treatment is so dependent on diagnosis. Does she also agree that the work of local groups such as the Dementia Friendly Parishes around the Yealm is going to be vital to increasing diagnosis in our communities in Devon?
Caroline Voaden
I thank the hon. Member for her contribution, and I agree that community groups such as the one around the Yealm are vital in caring for people with dementia.
Devon as a whole is falling worryingly behind. As of March 2025, our county’s dementia diagnosis rate stands well below the national average, placing Devon 39th out of 42 NHS systems in England. At the same time, demand for services is increasing sharply. Referrals to the Devon memory service have surged by 94% of the past five years, yet no additional investment has been made to meet this rising need. In Torbay the pressure is especially acute, with some individuals now waiting up to 20 weeks for an assessment.
A diagnosis can change lives. It provides clarity, access to support and the opportunity to plan for the future. It has proven to help people live well with dementia, but without investment people are being locked out of vital services, including support groups. One local dementia charity told me:
“Until there is a formal diagnosis, patients and their families cannot access our Memory Cafes, as our funding requires a confirmed diagnosis to provide support.”
I know from family members that this kind of support can make a world of difference, giving carers contact with others who truly understand the pressures and strain of caring for a much-loved relative who is slowly but surely losing themselves to this awful condition.
Oral Answers to Questions
Rebecca Smith Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Stephen Kinnock
I absolutely share the frustrations of my hon. Friend and his constituents. The investment made today was in response to GPs telling us that they needed more space; the investment will lead to more capacity and better access and outcomes for his constituents. Today’s announcement was only possible thanks to the decisions made in the October Budget, which were opposed by every party opposite. The choice is clear: investment in our NHS with Labour, or cuts with the Tories and Reform.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
My constituent Dr Toby Nelson, an NHS consultant dermatologist, has started a business that seeks to address the heavy demand on primary care for skin health screening. His business Map My Mole sends an image capture kit to patients to attach to their smartphones. The patients then send a high-resolution image remotely to be reviewed by a specialist consultant, bypassing the need for a GP appointment and freeing up time and resources for both doctor and patient. It has already resulted in a significant drop in skin cancer referrals in pilot GP surgeries. Will the Minister agree to meet Dr Nelson and me to discuss this revolutionary proposal?
Stephen Kinnock
The hon. Lady raises what sounds like an extremely interesting scheme. She will know that we have a strong commitment in our 10-year plan to shift from hospital to community, and indeed from analogue to digital. The digital aspects of that scheme sound very interesting, so I would be more than happy to take further representations from her.
Health and Adult Social Care Reform
Rebecca Smith Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Wes Streeting
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. If we improve the service at Whipps Cross hospital for his constituents, it will have the added benefit of improving the service at Whipps Cross Hospital for my constituents, too.
Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
What is missing from today’s announcement is any sort of update on the new hospitals programme review, which is vital in my constituency of South West Devon, because Derriford hospital needs its urgent and emergency care centre to bring down ambulance waiting times before it can even start to tackle its general waiting list issues. When will Derriford hospital hear whether it has been successful in the new hospitals programme review?
NHS Dentistry: South-west
Rebecca Smith Excerpts(6 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) on securing this vital debate about NHS dentistry in the south-west.
My constituents know the issues with access to NHS dentists only too well. Since 2020, the number of dentists in the county has fallen from 549 to 497. That means that each remaining dentist must see almost 300 additional patients a year. It is clear that we have a significant shortage of dentists in Devon. Only 34.7% of adults in the county have seen a dentist in the past year, compared with 55% 10 years ago. As we also heard from the hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race), very few children are seeing dentists: 46.6% of children in Devon in the past year, compared with 61% in 2016.
For those who live in or around Ivybridge in my constituency, there are currently only two dental practices within a 10-mile radius accepting new patients. That only gets worse for the more rural and coastal communities, and the statistics are not good for the communities within the Plymouth boundary. I am aware that an anomaly in Devon is that there is actually a waiting list for NHS dentists.
At one recent meeting with local senior health officials, it was pointed out that Devon’s waiting list is unusual, perhaps even unique. We have 60,000 people on that list, believing they are entitled to an NHS dentist, when, as was discussed at the same meeting and I was led to believe on the day, the existing NHS contract was designed to serve only 55% of the adult population. The assumption was that others would access dental care privately.
I am not making a judgment about whether that is right or wrong; I am just stating the fact that most people do not understand that. The dental system was set up to be more like that for opticians than GPs at the time. The issues we currently face in Devon have in many ways gone beyond those points’ being particularly relevant, but it is worth reflecting how important it is to be honest with people, as we make changes, to ensure they understand what the impact of those changes might be for them.
Before I reach the main point I wish to make today, I will briefly mention two challenges we face in Devon: how we train dentists and how NHS contracts are awarded. Devon is fortunate to have an outstanding dental school at the University of Plymouth. When it opened, many believed it would provide the city and the region beyond with a ready supply of new dentists to help us tackle our dental shortage. The school, however, is so successful that it is incredibly difficult to secure a place to study there, which has an impact on local people’s being able to study at home and perhaps stay after graduation.
Equally, I have been informed by an expert on dental training that the way we train dentists makes it very difficult for people to stay where they have studied. Currently, the system almost forces the non-local dentists—the ones that might be coming down from the midlands —to go back to where they came from, rather than staying in the south-west if they want to. I urge the Minister to look into what more can be done to ensure that students can more easily stay where they have studied; at the moment, even if a dental student falls in love with Devon, it is very difficult for them to stay and help us to solve our problems.
Secondly, I am concerned about the lack of flexibility in the awarding of new NHS contracts at a time when we are in desperate need of more dentists. I was contacted about a year ago by a dentist seeking to open a practice in my constituency, who was told by the ICB that the window for applications had closed. That may have been the case but, given that we are in such dire need of dentists, perhaps an exception could have been made.
That leads me, finally, to my main point. In the last 12 months, 876 people attended the emergency department at Derriford hospital for a dental reason. Of those, 18% were under the age of 20 and 82% were over 20. That is an average of 2.4 people per day having to resort to using the emergency department to access dental care. Of these patients, 77 were then admitted for treatment. That is why we need to see the stalled review into funding for Derriford hospital’s urgent and emergency care facility, because it is part of the bigger picture of how we provide dental care across the south-west. If we free up emergency, we have more capacity to look after the region more fully.