Dental Healthcare: East Anglia

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jerome Mayhew]

My answer is yes and no. Over the past 18 months to two years in Norfolk and Waveney, a lot of money has been spent on increasing access to emergency dentistry. Although I welcomed that and it has helped to deal with some acute issues, there is a much more fundamental problem. We must fix the system rather than decide on the least worst form of emergency care once the problem has become acute.

The big question is why the east of England is in this position. The wrong analysis of how we got here will lead to our imposing the wrong solution. Some people say, “Well, it’s because Norfolk is a remote, rural area with lots of coastline, and that brings problems. If you’re a newly qualified dentist, it’s probably a rather unfashionable place to go to make your new career if you’re not from that neck of the woods. It has a more elderly demographic, which may put off young dentists. It’s not where they want to go to set up their new home.”

Yet compare Norfolk with similar counties, such as Devon. I often use Devon as an example because it shares many characteristics with Norfolk: a slightly older population, a large rural coastline and a pretty similar population size. Look at the number of dentists in Devon: they have 49.6 per 100,000 people, which is far more than we have in the east of England. What is the difference? The answer is obvious. Since 2005, Devon has had a dental training school at Plymouth, which was the last one to be set up. The east of England made a bid for that contract and lost out to the Peninsula bid, and we can see the consequences of that in the teeth of Norfolk residents.

If someone wants to train as a dentist in Norfolk, Suffolk or elsewhere in East Anglia, the nearest place they can go to train is either Birmingham or London. That means that our home-grown talent has to go off somewhere else, several hours away, to train and qualify. The usual things happen: they develop their professional relationships in that region; they meet someone, fall in love and settle down; they put down roots in the community and they stay there and do not come back. The exact opposite is the case for people not from our region who qualify elsewhere. What is the incentive for them to come and set up home in a part of the world that they do not know and that is perhaps not attractive to newly qualified people in their mid-20s?

We also know that about 40% of graduates tend to stay where they train. We have that data from the University of East Anglia and its medical school, because each year it surveys graduates to see where they get their first job and each year about 40% of them take a job locally. This is the really important question for the Minister: do he and his Department accept that analysis? If they do not accept it, what is his explanation for the dearth of NHS dentists and even private dentists in East Anglia?

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman, my constituency neighbour, on securing this debate. I cannot speak for the Minister, although I certainly welcome the comments about the importance of a dental school. However, is the issue in East Anglia not a result of the region’s disproportionate failure under the previous Government’s dental recovery plan? It was said that East Anglia would miss its targets and that, even if it did hit them, it would still be 2.6 million dental appointments short of pre-pandemic levels. The hon. Gentleman was on the Government Benches in the last Parliament. Does he not understand why many people across East Anglia hold the Conservatives to account for the situation having become this bad?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s argument, but I do not think that it is particularly helpful. We are trying to work out what the solution is now and going forward. A huge amount of money was spent by central Government on NHS dentistry. The problem we had, as we can demonstrate by the £58 million underspend of the budget that was available, is that there are physically not enough dentists now. That is not a short-term brickbat that can be chucked around for party political points in a Westminster Hall debate at 11.11 on a Wednesday morning. I submit that it is a rather more serious issue that deserves a slightly more serious approach.

NHS Winter Readiness

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2024 Westminster Hall

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your experienced chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) on securing this vital debate. Our rural constituencies share many similarities, and the NHS winter crisis will be as great a source of concern for her constituents as it is for mine. She may or may not have noticed that she was speaking at the same time as the leader of the Liberal Democrats, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey), was in the main Chamber. I am grateful to the Minister for attending the debate at the precise time that her colleagues are responding to my right hon. Friend’s questions. This debate could not be more timely, given the context of today’s Budget and the winter we are rapidly heading into.

As I hope many Members will know, North Norfolk is proudly the constituency with the oldest demographic in the country. That means that when our NHS struggles, North Norfolk is acutely vulnerable to its effects. I pay tribute to the hard work going on in Norfolk to prepare for winter in our health services. Our GP surgeries and community nurses are working day in, day out to deliver flu and covid vaccinations for thousands of eligible residents. I encourage anyone eligible who is yet to take up their free vaccinations to contact their GP and do so. That work is vital to building the resilience of our communities ahead of the cold winter months, and I know that local residents are incredibly grateful for it.

We are once again heading into a difficult winter. In my constituency we have historically had some of the longest ambulance waiting times in the country. In towns and villages such as Blakeney, Cley and Wells-next-the-Sea, people are subjected to appalling and unacceptable wait times for urgent calls. Nationwide, people are fearful of the crisis, with recent polling stating that one in four people have avoided calling an ambulance because they are worried it would take too long to arrive. This cannot carry on.

To ease the pressure on our hospitals this winter, we need people to be able to leave acute settings when they are ready, and to keep well enough to avoid going back in. To add to what my hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire said about delayed discharges of care, that is yet another reason why I find myself completely baffled by the decision of the Conservative-led Norfolk county council to close the Benjamin Court reablement facility in Cromer. I declare an interest as a sitting Liberal Democrat member of that council.

The Benjamin Court facility helps to bring people back into the community, enabling them to recover in a more familiar setting. We know that convalescence works, reducing readmittance and enabling people to spend more time with their families as they recover. The integrated care board for Norfolk and Waveney says it wants to place a greater focus on recovery at home. I appreciate that may work for some, but it will not work for many. I am working alongside the campaign to save Benjamin Court to secure the future of the facility. I would greatly appreciate it if the Minister could take the time to meet me and representatives from the campaign to discuss why that vital service must be maintained.

Winter exacerbates one of the major challenges for people in North Norfolk accessing healthcare, which is our inadequate rural public transport. Wintery conditions and car reliance do not mix well; that is the reality that will present to many if they have an early morning appointment at one of our hospitals. People are faced with multi-hour round trips when using rural buses, and limited times when they could make an appointment, let alone the impact that any winter-led delays will have on their plans. To improve my constituents’ access to healthcare, we must also improve their access to public transport.

I fully support the Liberal Democrat plan to winter-proof our NHS, and a winter taskforce with ringfenced funding will go a long way to building the resilience that we need in North Norfolk. We cannot keep lurching from crisis to crisis each winter, stuck in one of the doom loops that the Chancellor spoke about before the Budget. We need to see a change of approach, a funding settlement that is proactive and not reactive, and an NHS that can fully support people across North Norfolk all year round.

Access to Primary Healthcare

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

Countless times on the doorstep during the general election campaign I discussed primary care with people in North Norfolk, and the damning legacy of the last Conservative Government means that almost everyone in my area has their own story. Stories of people who are waiting four weeks to see their GP about anything non-urgent; of people whose oral health has declined so much that they are no longer able to smile; of people who are worried for the supplies of vital medicines. The primary care crisis is acutely felt in North Norfolk, and I am glad that it is the Liberal Democrats who will be pushing this Government to bring forward solutions.

Residents in Blakeney are set to lose their rural branch surgery at the start of next month despite overwhelming efforts to save it. Many people who live in Blakeney rely on that surgery and have based their independent living plans around it. Surgeries are key community assets and people will genuinely suffer if they are lost. It is why I have been proud to support our call for a small surgeries fund, to give financial stability to surgeries like that in Blakeney. I hope that today the Minister can tell us whether the Government would support that.

The dentistry crisis is another of the biggest issues for North Norfolk. The hon. Member for Norwich North (Alice Macdonald) reminded us that the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care had described Norfolk as the Sahara of dental deserts. I have been pleased with the progress we are making, working with the integrated care board in the months since my election, safeguarding services in Holt and Wells, and pushing forward the case for a new dentistry school at the University of East Anglia. I have enjoyed working with my colleague the hon. Member for Norwich North on that. This issue matters to people like my constituent Alan. He receives no state support despite his wife being unable to work, and when they needed urgent dental treatment he was forced to dip into his small savings. It cannot be right that when someone pays in to the system all his life, it simply is not there when he needs it.

These problems are deeper-rooted. Mental health services do not have the networks to really reach people in rural areas. Our small surgeries are vital because of our lack of public transport infrastructure, our GPs struggle to find new partners because of ballooning property prices, and our pharmacies and hospitals cannot attract the specialists they need because there is not the housing. The solutions to these problems in primary care require an holistic approach, so I hope that the Government are taking steps to stop these problems being siloed.

All Liberal Democrat MPs are champions for our left-behind local health services. I urge the House to support the motion and show that we mean business about bringing our primary care services, like those in North Norfolk, back from the brink.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steff Aquarone Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Wes Streeting]

I could not have picked a better example of the previous Government’s desperately low ceiling of ambition than the fact that, after 14 years, they laud their triumph of dental vans roaming the country in the absence of actual dentists and dental surgeries. What an absolute disgrace. I accept that the shadow Secretary of State for Health and Social Care was just the last in a very long list of Health and Social Care Secretaries who had the chance to fix the problems. It was not all on her, and it is important that I say that—not least because of the Conservative leadership election that will be taking place soon.

I congratulate the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), on his appointment, but he sat behind Secretaries of State as their Parliamentary Private Secretary year after year, week after week, looking at the utterly abysmal failure of their record. When it comes to criticising this Government on the actions that we will take, the Conservatives do not have a leg to stand on.

[Steff Aquarone (North Norfolk) (LD)]

2. What steps his Department plans to take to improve access to NHS dentists.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and welcome him to his place. Thanks to what the Conservative party has done to NHS dentistry over the past 14 years, a staggering 13 million people are unable to see a dentist. I know that the hon. Gentleman represents the constituency that has the lowest number of dentists per head in the entire country. Our rescue plan will provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit dentists to areas that need them. We will rebuild the service for the longer term by reforming the dental contract.

[Steff Aquarone]

As the Minister has alluded to, we in North Norfolk have suffered in particular from unallocated units of dental treatment being moved to other parts of the country. The integrated care board has been told that it will have to return this year’s unused money to the Treasury. Will the Minister commit to protecting unallocated dental funds in my constituency?

[Stephen Kinnock]

As my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary stated, on the Monday after the general election, he met the British Dental Association to look at a range of issues around the long-term NHS contract. That is an ongoing dialogue—it includes units of dental activity, of course—and we need to ensure that we have the negotiations rapidly. We will work at pace to address some of those long-term issues, but let us not forget that the Conservative party allowed the NHS contract to atrophy and took NHS dentistry to the brink of collapse in our country.