Neighbourhood Health Framework

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

Today I would like to inform the House about the publication of the neighbourhood health framework, which outlines the next steps that we are asking the NHS and local government to take—working with civil society—to deliver neighbourhood health.

Neighbourhood health is at the heart of the 10-year health plan and our mission to build an NHS fit for the future. It is underpinned by three shifts—hospital to community; treatment to prevention; analogue to digital—and neighbourhood health is pivotal to all three.

The shift to a neighbourhood health service will ensure that services are easier for people to access and professionals to deliver, with multidisciplinary teams that work together to reach people earlier, to support them to stay well and live independently, and to prevent needs escalating. This joined-up approach will deliver more preventive, personalised and digitally enabled care.

The framework builds on our previous publications, such as the NHS medium-term planning framework for 2026-27 to 2028-29, the strategic commissioning framework for integrated care boards, and the better care fund framework for 2026-27. We know that there are already strong examples of neighbourhood working across the country. The neighbourhood health framework aims to provide clarity and consistency for local leaders to develop and scale their neighbourhood health services and plans.

The neighbourhood health framework outlines a minimum set of interventions that all ICBs should deliver over the next three years. While reforms will be led locally, we have heard from systems that there are many common-sense actions that work well everywhere—these actions are the building blocks of successful, joined-up neighbourhood health services. Importantly, this set of interventions is not the ceiling of neighbourhood health, but the foundation on which local priorities will be built. The framework is designed to create the conditions for local leaders to succeed, giving them the flexibility to design services that best meet the needs of their local communities.

The framework outlines 10 core steps that we are asking local government and ICBs to take in 2026-27, including agreeing neighbourhood footprints and confirming intentions to use pooled funding under the better care fund. Progress made in 2026-27 will form the basis for action in 2027-28, when, working through health and wellbeing boards, ICBs and local government are expected to develop local neighbourhood health plans.

Central to our plans are neighbourhood health centres, which will bring care closer to where people live. Our ambition is for there to be a neighbourhood health centre in every community. To kickstart delivery, in the 2025 autumn Budget we announced our commitment to deliver 120 neighbourhood health centres by 2030, and 250 by 2035, funded through a mix of public-private partnership and public capital, and starting in the areas of greatest need.

At the heart of our work to deliver neighbourhood health are people, particularly those working hard across health and care, wider local government, and with our civil society partners. Through their efforts, we will see increased and improved join-up between public services, as multidisciplinary, cross-sector teams work in a system that focuses on keeping people well, using the workforce, funding and local assets to their best effect. We recognise that the current system is too siloed, and we are committed to supporting the culture change that is a prerequisite for building the seamless, integrated, person-centred care that patients and the workforce are crying out for.

The 10-year workforce plan will set out aggregate assumptions and scenarios to inform local NHS workforce plans when published later this year.

We will support local systems to deliver through the national neighbourhood health implementation programme, which will build capability and identify success criteria for the scaling of new neighbourhood health models. So far we have launched the national neighbourhood health implementation programme across 43 places in England.

We will also support ICBs to commission new outcomes-based neighbourhood health services through the development of contractual levers, including single neighbourhood provider and multi-neighbourhood provider contracts. We will also support the goals of neighbourhood health in national reform agendas, such as Best Start family hubs, Pride in Place initiatives, local Get Britain Working plans, and workwell.

I am proud to be the Minister driving neighbourhood health. I have seen that every day across health, care and wider local government, people work tirelessly to improve our services and make them better for communities. Neighbourhood health is the beginning of an exciting new chapter in how we build an NHS, and wider health and care system, fit for the future.

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GP Contract

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care if he will make a statement on the changes to the GP contract in 2026-27.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

When we came into office, we found GP services in an appalling state—underfunded, understaffed and in crisis. Since July 2024, this Government have been fixing the front door to the NHS, investing more than £100 million to fix up GP surgeries this year, making online booking available to patients across the country and recruiting 2,000 more GPs who are now serving patients on the frontline. Following investment in advice and guidance, we have seen 1.3 million diverted referrals since April 2025. Those are people who would have otherwise been added to the electives waiting list. A lot has been done, but there is a lot more still to do. We are determined to make the system fairer for coastal communities and deprived areas, so we have launched a review into the Carr-Hill formula to close the gap on health disparities and ensure that funding is targeted on the basis of need. We will shortly update the House in the usual way on our Carr-Hill review.

Last year’s GP contract saw the biggest cash increase in more than a decade, and this year we are investing an additional £485 million, taking the total investment made through the contract to more than £13.8 billion this financial year. Investment must always be combined with reform, so the new contract will improve access for patients by requiring that all clinically urgent requests are dealt with on the same day. It will provide a mechanism to hire even more GPs via a new practice-level reimbursement scheme, and it will support the shift from treatment to prevention, as set out in our 10-year plan, through incentives to boost childhood vaccination rates, better care for patients living with obesity and requiring GPs to share data with the lung cancer screening programme.

These ideas were not cooked up by someone sat behind a desk in Whitehall. What is happening is that we are taking the best of the NHS to the rest of the NHS, working with pioneering practices that have been doing these things for a long time. Today we can see that our policies are working, and after years of decline in general practice, we are getting the front door back on its hinges. Patient satisfaction with general practice is finally moving in the right direction. According to the Office for National Statistics, almost 77% of people described contacting their GP as easy in January this year, up from just 60%, where it was languishing in July 2024. I know that when he gets up, the hon. Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans) will hugely welcome, as will his hon. Friends, the progress that we are making.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Dr Evans]

The Health Secretary and his team have perfected the sales pitch for NHS reform. The problem is that the detail never seems to arrive. We have seen a 10-year health plan with no delivery chapter, and a plan for the abolition of NHS England with no price tag; the Health Secretary has announced 10 new “straight to test” referral pathways, but could not name a single one; and now we are seeing a new GP contract with more questions than answers.

Calling something modernisation does not make it reform. If the rules and the delivery are unclear, it is simply confusion with branding. “Advice and guidance”, for example, appears in practice to create a single point of access for referrals. GPs will no longer be able to refer patients directly to a consultant, even when they believe that it is clinically appropriate. Will the Government publish the clinical evidence supporting that approach? Who will carry the legal responsibility if, in a GP’s professional judgment, a patient needs to see a consultant but must first go through “advice and guidance”? If advice and guidance becomes mandatory as an extra layer before referral, are the Government not, in essence, managing the waiting list by keeping patients in primary care rather than treating them in secondary care? Waiting lists will look shorter on paper, but patients are simply waiting elsewhere in the system. Can the Minister clarify exactly where those patients will appear in the official waiting list figures? The contract also requires patients whose cases are deemed “clinically urgent” to be dealt with on the same day, but it does not define “urgent” or explain what “dealt with” means, and that really matters.

Let me therefore ask the Minister three clear questions. First, when will the Government publish the clinical definition of “urgent”—a patient’s sick note is urgent for the patient, but not clinically urgent—and what counts as a patient’s being “dealt with” on the same day? Secondly, the Minister has talked about access, but how can practices guarantee same-day responses when demand is uncapped and definitions are not published? Finally, with advice and guidance being required as a mandate beforehand, how will we ensure that patients are protected, and where will they appear on the waiting lists?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the GP-related questions, for which I was grateful when he finally got to them.

On clinical evidence for advice and guidance, I think that the evidence speaks for itself. We introduced advice and guidance in the last contract with an £80 million investment, and it has been a stunning success. Take-up across the country has been huge, and—this is the statistic that matters most of all—1.3 million referrals that would otherwise have gone to electives have been dealt with by GPs. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman, who is chuntering from a sedentary position, seems not to care about what actually matters for patients, but through advice and guidance they are able to get a response from their GPs within about 48 hours. I can assure him that it takes a great deal longer to secure an out-patient appointment. If he is looking for statistics on advice and guidance, let me give him that one again: 1.3 million referrals have been taken off electives and dealt with by GPs. That is part of the hospital-to-community shift.

The hon. Gentleman asked for a definition of “urgent”. We trust our clinicians. We know that general practitioners are experts in their field. They know when they see an urgent issue, but they also know that that the symptoms might be a more acute manifestation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or that a child’s rash suddenly looks more dangerous than it did the day before. We trust our GPs to make those decisions, and it is a real pity that Opposition Members do not seem to do the same.

The hon. Gentleman also wanted a statistic in relation to access. In July 2024, patient satisfaction with access to a GP was languishing at a miserable 60% after 14 years of Tory neglect and chaos. Today it stands at 76%, which is a 16 percentage point improvement. The hon. Gentleman asked for statistics; perhaps he should take that statistic and deal with it.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the Carr-Hill formula. York had the lowest funding under the primary care groups, the primary care trusts and the clinical commissioning groups, and it now has the lowest funding under the integrated care boards. It is because it is not the most affluent place that it is really important that the new funding formula works for areas such as York. Could the Minister say a bit more about how that will be determined, so that my community gets the health spending that it deserves?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The Carr-Hill review is happening as we speak, and I expect to get a submission from officials on the first round of analysis that is being conducted by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. That will be the first step towards agreeing on how we make the formula work, with a view to implementing the new Carr-Hill formula from 1 April 2027.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Maguire (Epsom and Ewell) (LD)]

I welcome the fact that the Government have adopted our policy of seeing clinically urgent patients on the same day, but patient safety has been put at risk by increasing workloads, according to members of the Royal College of General Practitioners. One in five patients has been forced to wait at least two weeks for an appointment. Although the Government’s funding of 1,600 new GPs is welcome, it is insufficient to deliver the required shift to community care. The Health Foundation says that an additional 6,500 GPs will be needed by 2031, and the Liberal Democrats would provide 8,000. What is the Minister doing to address the shortfall? Residents in Epsom and Ewell, who already struggle to get a GP appointment, are concerned that increased housing will make it even harder. What is the Minister doing to ensure that there is funding for GP buildings, as well as GPs?

I welcome the Government’s focus on the obesity crisis, but it does not fix the root cause. Aside from the junk food ban, what steps are the Government taking to encourage children and young people to create active and healthy habits for life from an early age?

[Stephen Kinnock]

On buildings, we have the £102 million primary care utilisation fund, which will be very important in refurbishing GP practices. We are committed to delivering 120 new neighbourhood health centres by the end of this Parliament, and 250 by 2035.

The hon. Lady asks about GP numbers. In our manifesto, we pledged to bring back the family doctor, and that is precisely what we are doing. We said that we would deliver 1,000 new GPs to the frontline, but we are delivering 2,000, so we have smashed through our manifesto pledge. There will be more to come, because we are making the practice-level reimbursement scheme more flexible so that it does not apply only to GPs who have just come out of training; we are now enabling practices to hire more experienced GPs. That will also help with under-employment. Many GPs across the country practise only three days a week, and this is an opportunity to boost that to four or even five days a week.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

When this Government took office, the number of registered patients per GP in Calder Valley was much higher than the national average, with one GP surgery in Brighouse having 600 additional patients per GP. Given the new GP contracts and the new Carr-Hill formula, will the Minister confirm that the funding will help practices in my constituency to recruit the GPs they need, so that people can see a doctor when they need one?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am not able to pre-empt the Carr-Hill review, but we have had a system based on data that is often 25 years old. Of course, we know that the Conservatives have the Tunbridge Wells philosophy. We will always recall the former Prime Minister standing in front of Conservative party members and proudly proclaiming the fact that he had been taking money out of parts of the country that needed it most and pumping it into those parts of the country that were delivering his pork barrel politics.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

The nod to the pressures on rural general practices in the Carr-Hill process is to be welcomed, as is the improvement to many GP practices, but so many principals in general practice are throwing in the towel in the prime of their professional lives because of the bureaucracy, which many of them tell me burdens them well after the last patient has left their clinic. What are we going to do to reduce the administrative pressure on general practitioners, and to prevent the haemorrhaging of our most experienced doctors through early retirement or going part time?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point about bureaucracy. Many of the reforms that we are pushing for in the contract are designed to reduce bureaucracy. For example, by moving to a single point of access and embedding advice and guidance in the contract, we will reduce the number of transactions. In the current system, the practice needs to put in a request for a £20 payment each time it provides advice and guidance; we are embedding that and streamlining it.

The other point to make is that at the heart of our 10-year plan is the shift from analogue to digital. I have seen some extraordinarily effective artificial intelligence technology around ambient voice services, which enable an entire consultation to be recorded and put directly into the system, thereby saving the GP hours at the end of the day in writing up notes.

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a working GP in the NHS. I probably would not be standing here if general practice had not been decimated over the last 14 years. I welcome the £485 million of extra funding, and I also welcome the fact that the capacity and access money is being channelled back into emergency GP action, so increasing the number of appointments, and increasing continuity of care by bringing back the family doctor. May I have some reassurance that the processes of advice and guidance and the referral mechanisms will not get in the way of Jess’s rule, which is about referring patients on their third presentation without any particular diagnosis?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The £292 million we have made available for advice and guidance is repurposed funding from the capacity and access improvement payments, so it is part of incentivising improved access and better patient outcomes. I can absolutely assure him that Jess’s rule remains fixed as a really important part of ensuring that it is three strikes and a referral. Whatever happens, that will be a top priority throughout the embedding of this contract.

[Dame Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)]

My constituents will welcome some of these headlines, such as clinically urgent cases being seen on the same day and more GPs, but what is being done to help accommodate them? Stubbington surgery in my constituency has excellent staff, delivering really great patient satisfaction, but they are hampered by really suboptimal buildings. They have expanded to fill every inch of available space, and the former cupboard under the stairs is now the phlebotomy room. They need a new site, but that is proving very difficult to find—not only the place, but the capital funding to deliver it. Can the Minister give them any hope from this announcement?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am not familiar with the details of that specific case, but if the hon. Member writes to me, I will be more than happy to furnish her with a response. There is a real concern in some parts of the country, particularly where there have been new developments or populations moving into the area, that the GP practice does not have the required capacity. I am not sure whether that has happened in the case she refers to, but in such cases we also look to developers, including to section 106 and the community infrastructure levy as an opportunity. We have the primary care utilisation fund, and with neighbourhood health centre funding coming on stream, that may also be an opportunity. If she cares to write to me, I will furnish her with a response.

[Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)]

The welcome funding, alongside the contract, to hire 16,000 more GPs will be really encouraging news for my community. However, in high-growth areas such as mine, all too often it is physical space rather than funding for GPs that constrains practices. I am really glad that, after getting involved, we have been able to help move forward crucial expansion projects at Shefford health centre and Lower Stondon GP surgery in my constituency, but we should not need the MP to get involved in such situations to help our GPs. Will the Minister meet me to decide how we can work with our ICBs better to ensure that, where we have areas of significant housing growth, we will automatically see growth in the number of GP surgeries in the future?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Very much along the lines of what I said to the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), we need to ensure that the social infrastructure is there in such areas of population growth. I would be more than happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that further.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

In this country, we have an immense wealth of talented young people who would love to train to be doctors, but over many decades we have not recruited enough. I appreciate that this is not just an issue for the Department of Health and that it spans the Department for Education and the Treasury, but what more could be done to increase the number of doctor placements so that we can train more and rely less on recruiting doctors from overseas who often come from countries much poorer than our own?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, but that is precisely what we have been doing. We said in our manifesto that we would bring back the family doctor. We said we would hire 1,000 more GPs to the frontline and we have delivered 2,000. When we came into office in July 2024 there was a bizarre situation where demand for access to GPs was spiralling, yet the additional roles reimbursement scheme, designed under the previous Government, was not for GPs. It was for physician associates and anybody else in the practice, but not for GPs. We have bulldozed that bureaucracy and invested £82 million in getting the ARRS up and running and fit for purpose. As a result, we have 2,000 more GPs and 1,600 more full-time equivalents through this contract.

[Michelle Welsh (Sherwood Forest) (Lab)]

I recently met people from Byron Primary Care Network, who were clear about the pressures facing primary care. How will reforming GP contracts ensure that communities in my constituency with a growing population can better access GP services? We have been waiting over 14 years for a GP practice in Hucknall.

[Stephen Kinnock]

A number of things have happened which will help with access to GPs. One is the very significant increase in the number of GPs we have put on the frontline and another is online access. We are now dealing with the 8 am scramble by ensuring we do not have a choke point on the telephone lines because more and more people are able to use online access. On capabilities in terms of physical infrastructure, a very important part of that is our commitment to neighbourhood health. There will be 120 new neighbourhood health centres by the end of this Parliament, which will really help to deliver the hospital-to-community shift that I am sure my hon. Friend’s constituents are looking forward to.

[Steve Darling (Torbay) (LD)]

GPs truly are the frontline of our NHS. I recently had the pleasure of meeting representatives from the Chilcote practice in Torquay. They shared with me their concerns about the global sum payment. Their calculations suggest that it should be a little in excess of £200, yet the recently announced payment is £128 a year. Will the Minister please advise on how he plans to bridge that gap?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The very significant uplift we have made to the contract—the £1.1 billion last year and the £485 million additional investment we are making this year—will go some way to address the hon. Gentleman’s question, but there is, of course, always more we can do. We have to deal with very many competing priorities across the Department of Health and Social Care, but general practice is right at the top of the list. That is demonstrated by the fact that we have invested in more GPs, better online access and more physical infrastructure for general practice.

[Michael Payne (Gedling) (Lab)]

I recently met those from Stenhouse medical practice in Arnold. They talked to me about the need to invest in primary care to alleviate pressure on our hospitals. May I take this opportunity to thank all GPs and GP staff across Gedling? Will the Minister explain to me what actions the Government are taking and how they will improve GP services for my constituents in Gedling?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend makes such an important point about paying tribute to the incredible work that our GPs and their teams do right across the length and breadth of our country, including in Gedling; he is an excellent champion for his constituency. This is about marrying investment with reform. In addition to the £1.1 billion in the previous contract, the £485 million this year and the measures I mentioned to recruit more GPs to the frontline, there is also very important work happening around the shift from treatment to prevention in the 10-year plan. We are boosting childhood vaccination rates, providing better care for patients living with obesity and requiring GPs to share data with the lung cancer screening programme. This is about incentivising GPs, working with them as partners as we move forward into the modernisation of our health service.

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

The new contract has stated that GPs must offer on-the-day appointments for urgent requests—which they already do—and unlimited access during opening hours up to 6.30 pm, with no definition of “urgent”. Katrina, a constituent who messaged me today, said, “This will mean that those with complex needs, like me, will wait longer for appointments.” What reassurance can the Secretary of State offer constituents such as Katrina that this new system will work for everyone, not just those self-diagnosing their sick note as urgent?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The key point here is that GPs are the clinicians whom we trust to define what urgent means. There are, of course, a number of criteria and conditions that will ring an extra alarm bell and ensure that the patient is registered as urgent. It is worth mentioning that 46% of all GP appointments already take place on the same day as contact is made with the surgery—with the majority of those classified as urgent—so performance is already good. This is not something new that we are landing on general practice; it is much more about ensuring that we have a clear line of sight into who the urgent patients are and ensuring that they get treatment on the first day.

[Markus Campbell-Savours (Penrith and Solway) (Lab)]

I welcome these reforms. However, on the issue of accountability, despite years of failure documented in multiple inspection reports by the coroner and the Care Quality Commission, the integrated care board has not yet removed the contract from Cockermouth’s Castlegate and Derwent partnership. What else do Ministers believe I can do to ensure that a failing partnership is held to account, other than calling for the resignation of the senior partner, Dr Desert?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for his constituents. I am not familiar with the details of the case that he mentions, but I would be happy to look into it; if he would write to me, we can take that further.

[Alicia Kearns (Rutland and Stamford) (Con)]

Local doctors tell me that they were hoping the new contract would be focused on family medicine, with detail about the 10-year plan and neighbourhood health centres that the Minister has just touched on. I ask when the Secretary of State will be releasing the detail of the neighbourhood contract, which is really vital as I work with local health authorities to try to secure a second practice for residents in Stamford.

[Stephen Kinnock]

The guidance on neighbourhood health will be published very soon indeed; it is almost complete, and is coming soon. We recognise that general practice will be right at the heart of neighbourhood health, so we have to ensure a single neighbourhood provider contract and a multi-neighbourhood provider contract that are aligned with the best value that we can deliver, both for the taxpayer and in terms of patient outcomes. We will also be consulting on the single neighbourhood provider and multi-neighbourhood provider, with the consultation process starting some time after the overarching neighbourhood guidance, which is coming out very soon.

[Helena Dollimore (Hastings and Rye) (Lab/Co-op)]

It has been really hard to get a GP appointment in Hastings and Rye, so I welcome the bold action that this Government are taking to tackle that 8 am scramble to get a GP appointment: more funding for GPs; changing the funding formula to better support coastal towns, like ours; and requiring GPs, as part of this new contract, to have online booking and same-day appointments for urgent cases. However, I want to ensure that all the people I represent are benefiting from the reforms this Government are introducing, so this spring I will be launching a GP survey for all my constituents to fill out. What work is the Minister doing to ensure that we feel the benefits of these reforms everywhere in the country, and will he, alongside NHS officials at the integrated care board, meet me later this year to discuss the findings of my GP survey?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend and I have had some discussions about GP practices in her constituency, and I know she is doing excellent work to ensure that performance is always being driven in the right direction. She asks what we are doing right across the country; the Carr-Hill formula will be a nationwide initiative, and the contract itself is also nationwide. It is important that the Government do not try to micromanage and that ICBs and trusts work together. We are there to set the framework and ensure that everybody is clear about the outcomes; it is then up to the people at the coalface to deliver those outcomes. We do need to know where that is not working, so perhaps we could look at my hon. Friend’s survey once she has it; it would be a good way of checking in and ensuring that there is a golden thread between the outcomes that we want to see and the delivery on the ground.

[Tom Gordon (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (LD)]

I recently visited the Spa surgery in Harrogate and spent half a day with practice managers, GPs, partners, receptionists and nurses, and I am grateful to them for that opportunity. The Minister said earlier that he trusts GPs to make decisions, and just a moment ago he said that the Government should not be in the business of micromanaging, but the new contract outlines specific directions for spending. How does the Minister reconcile that with the fact that local GP partners tell me that the contract will remove the flexibility to manage and meet local service need, and that the uplift in funding will not cover the cost of these additional obligations?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Member for his question, but it is pretty clear to us, based on the experience of advice and guidance—I think it is advice and guidance that he is referring to specifically—that the £80 million we invested in advice and guidance under the last contract has been extraordinarily successful, with very high take-up right across the country. As a result, we have kept 1.3 million people out of electives who did not need to go to those out-patient appointments. What we are doing now is embedding that in the contract, because it has been such a success.

By embedding it in the contract, we are giving more flexibility and less bureaucracy, because there will be a single point of access in the trust. GPs will be able to access the high-level consultant expertise and specialism that they need in order to assess whether or not a particular patient needs to go to an out-patient appointment. It will mean more flexibility, high-level triage and much better outcomes for patients.

[Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

My dad was a GP in Hartlepool for 33 years. He worked through the improvements brought in by the last Labour Government and, until his retirement, through the destruction that the last Conservative Government oversaw—most notably the inability to get a same-day urgent appointment, which saw far too many patients ending up at the door of their local hospital. Does the Minister agree that ensuring that people can access same-day urgent appointments gets treatment out of hospitals and back into communities, where it belongs?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question; I can feel the passion with which he asks it, particularly because of his family connection. It is vital that clinically urgent patients get treatment on day one. We are confident that that is happening in many cases, but embedding it in the contract means an additional level of transparency and commitment from all sides of the equation. That is really important, because it recognises the good performance that is already happening in many cases but will also drive up performance in areas where it is not at the level at which it should be.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Cambridgeshire receives an increasingly raw deal from the Carr-Hill formula, due to the fact that the population demographics have changed so dramatically over the past 25 years. I therefore welcome the announcement that the Carr-Hill formula will be reviewed and that a new formula will be in place by 1 April next year. Cambridgeshire is about to move into a mega-ICB with Bedfordshire and Milton Keynes, so could the Minister allay the concerns in my constituency about how that will affect Cambridgeshire? We are about to see a change in the Carr-Hill formula, and we are about to move into one of the biggest ICBs in the country, which will undoubtedly have an impact on local services.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Clearly, a lot of change is happening in the system, but that is because a lot of change was required. Frankly, we have to do what we are doing if we are going to get the NHS back on its feet and fit for the future, with the three big shifts set out in our 10-year plan. Part of that is about the structure. Our view is that we can consolidate more of the back-office activity, which will free up more resources and allow us to do more on the frontline. ICBs play a vital role in that, particularly in commissioning. We want to see more strategic commissioning and more resource and expertise put into the parts of the ICB that are delivering better outcomes in population health. We must also see less duplication and more streamlining of back-office functions. It is about getting more efficiency but also being more responsive to patients and practitioners on the frontline.

[Jim Dickson (Dartford) (Lab)]

I warmly welcome the Government’s reforms, which will ensure same-day access for GPs in urgent cases and will also make it easier to get an appointment online, finally moving towards ending the 8 am scramble. I recently visited Swanscombe health centre, where the brilliant team is under significant pressure because of the large number of new families moving to the area, particularly neighbouring Ebbsfleet, which has seen 5,000 very welcome new homes built so far. Will the Minister visit Swanscombe with me to see the work that the practice is doing and look at how we can get GP services designed into developments much earlier in the process in areas such as Ebbsfleet Garden City?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Hon. Members raise this issue with me regularly. There seems to be something of a disconnect when new developments are being built, whereby the section 106 agreement or the community infrastructure levy just do not seem to be delivering the social infrastructure that they should be delivering. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that in relation to the specific case he raises. Then, of course, we could discuss the possibility of a visit.

[Mr Adnan Hussain (Blackburn) (Ind)]

Blackburn is one of the most deprived towns in the country, and the health inequalities are stark. Despite that, Blackburn has the third-highest patient to GP ratio in the UK. While I welcome the Government’s intention to move towards a needs-based funding formula, the satisfaction statistics to which the Minister refers simply do not reflect what is felt by my constituents. In recent weeks, I have had constituents say that it has been almost impossible to obtain a GP appointment, whether online or via the phone. When will residents in my constituency see the difference that he refers to?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I think the first part of the hon. Member’s question is connected to the second part, because, as he correctly points out, thanks to the 14 years of neglect and incompetence that we saw, the Carr-Hill formula became a very anachronistic way of sharing funding. It should be based on need, but it was based on very outdated statistics and data. We are fixing that, and the changes that we are making will be felt by his constituents. It is disappointing to hear that he has had that feedback, because it does not reflect the nationwide polling from the Office for National Statistics, which shows that satisfaction with access, which was languishing at 60% in July 2024, now stands at 76%.

[Anna Dixon (Shipley) (Lab)]

I hugely welcome the investment into general practice, particularly the flexibility to employ often under-employed GPs who want additional hours and shifts. I also welcome the Minister’s comments about innovation and AI. Sadly, I have had representations from Grange Park surgery in Burley-in-Wharfedale in my constituency, which finds that it is unable to deliver high-quality care because of unreliable and outdated IT systems that are provided across the Bradford area. Frequent outages directly impact access and patient care, so will the Minister set out what investment is available to ICBs to ensure that shift from analogue to digital?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Thanks to the decisions that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made, significant additional funding has been made available for capital investment in our NHS, and a big part of that is about driving the shift from analogue to digital. The other shifts—hospital to community, sickness to prevention—are not going to work otherwise; they all rely on this pivotal shift from the analogue age to the digital age. It is disappointing to hear the specific feedback that my hon. Friend has heard from the practices in her constituency. If she would like to write to me, or grab me in the Division Lobby, we can talk about the specifics of those cases. But overall the capital budget has been significantly boosted by the decisions that our Chancellor of the Exchequer has made.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

Serious concerns have been raised about GPs being offered incentives to prescribe particular branded drugs. We cannot have a situation where prescribing decisions are made to balance the books; they should be made on a purely clinical basis, as I am sure the Minister agrees. With many GP practices seriously strapped for cash, does the Department of Health and Social Care have a clear picture of the situation, and what consideration has the Minister given to banning incentives so that the very best drugs are prescribed, not those produced by the most influential companies?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The hon. Member raises an important point. It is important that we at the Department of Health and Social Care work closely with the NHS regions and the ICBs to keep a close eye on that issue. It is vital that GPs are aligned with the highest professional standards. If we see those standards not being observed in any case, action must be taken. If she has specific evidence to suggest that such practices are going on, she is more than welcome to share it with me.

[Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)]

We all welcome the work being done to get our national health service back on track. What engagement does the Department have with, and what guidance does it provide to, ICBs about what happens when a practice closes or a GP returns their contract in rural communities, like in Betley in Newcastle-under-Lyme? We need to do whatever we can to ensure that people in rural communities such as mine do not get left behind and can access the GP services that my hon. Friend the Minister outlined in their own communities.

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is right that it is vital that ICBs have a clear understanding of their population health needs and their demographics. It is important that the ICB is ahead of that curve and taking decisions well in advance of a practice closing down so that a commensurate service is provided; that is a really important part of the ICB’s responsibilities. If he has specific examples where he feels that his ICB has not been delivering on that basis, he is welcome to share those with me.

[Iqbal Mohamed (Dewsbury and Batley) (Ind)]

I pay tribute to the GPs in Dewsbury and Batley and the surrounding villages. The Minister mentioned preventive health. What steps are the Government taking to support GPs in their treatment of patients with preventable or avoidable diseases through the prescription of exercise and healthy foods? Secondly, we talk about online access, which is welcome—my constituents welcome surgeries that offer appointments throughout the day—but how will the Minister support the digitally excluded who cannot get through at 8 am and do not have access to online applications?

[Stephen Kinnock]

On prevention, there are some really important measures in the contract: in essence, we are recalibrating the quality outcomes framework, which is the basis for payments to incentivise the actions that GPs take. By changing the QOF, as it is called, we can shift that in one direction or the other, and we have changed it to incentivise boosting childhood vaccination rates, particularly in those areas of the country where vaccination rates are worryingly low, and better care for patients living with obesity. That is about exactly the things the hon. Member just mentioned: prescribing, if you like, exercise regimes and advising on better nutrition. We are also changing the QOF to require GPs to share data with the lung cancer screening programme. Those are just three examples of what we are doing within the contract.

On online access, it is clear that there must always be three channels of access to a GP—walk-in, telephone and online—and that for an urgent matter it would be a walk-in or a telephone call. What has really worked is that online access has taken pressure off the telephone lines as people who do not have urgent requirements have been migrating online and using the NHS app—take-up of the app is also excellent—so we are moving in the right direction.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

My father was a family doctor in my Camborne, Redruth and Hayle constituency for more than 40 years; now that he is in his 91st year, I am thankful he is no longer practising. I have the highest number of deep-end group GP practices in my constituency, including the one where my father practised. While I welcome the consideration for deprived areas, will the Minister elaborate on what targeted funding there will be for areas with the highest levels of deprivation?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question and ask him to please pass on my best wishes to his father and thank him for the outstanding service he provided over many years. The Carr-Hill formula review is an important piece of work. It will have a complex range of drivers in it, based on remoteness and coastal areas, but socioeconomic indicators will be very much at its heart. Those are the clear terms of reference that we gave to the National Institute for Health and Care Research, and that is the basis of the review. I expect those documents from officials very soon, and we will update the House accordingly. Some of the process was set out in a “Dear Colleague” letter a little while back, but we are also keen to have feedback from MPs in that process.

[Ayoub Khan (Birmingham Perry Barr) (Ind)]

Many of the surgeries in my constituency have faced enormous pressure when having to deal with patients who cannot get an appointment, so I welcome the additional support that will come to our communities, especially inner-city communities. The Laurie Pike and al-Shafa medical centres in my constituency do so much work on prevention; I hope the Minister will join me in commending them on the work they do. Will there be ringfenced funding for preventive work in areas such as cardiovascular disease detection, respiratory illnesses and diabetes?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Please do pass on my thanks to the Laurie Pike and al-Shafa practices for the outstanding work they do. We are not really doing ringfencing; we are embedding prevention in the contract through the quality outcomes framework. Those incentives are the best way to give practices the flexibility they need while ensuring that they are clear about what we expect in terms of outcomes.

Issues such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes are part of the quality outcomes framework. It is also worth mentioning the Pharmacy First scheme, which is looking to move some of this work out of GPs and enabling pharmacists to operate at the top of their practice. That is another example of the shift from hospital to community, which is so important in enabling people to get the best possible care in the right place at the right time, as close as possible to their homes.

[Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Minister for his answers so far. One of the No. 1 issues that came up on the doorstep when I was canvassing across my constituency before the general election was same-day access to GPs. Although I recognise that there is still work to be done, I welcome the work the Labour Government and the Minister have done to improve GP access for constituents across Harlow. Does the Minister recognise that there is still more to be done? Will he touch a little on the importance that the shift from hospital to community will have for hospitals like mine, the Princess Alexandra hospital, and specifically the accident and emergency department?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is right: avoiding preventable admissions is right at the heart of what we are trying to achieve. Of course, we have challenges with delayed discharge—something like 14% of patients in hospital beds are medically fit for discharge—and if we look at the flow of patients through hospital, we see that we can address a lot of the problems at that end of the process by preventing avoidable admissions in the first place. The advice and guidance element of the contract is therefore very important, because it is by improving co-ordination and teamwork between primary care and secondary care that we will ensure that the 1.3 million people who would have ended up on the electives waiting list or going into outpatient clinics no longer need to be there—they will be dealt with by the teamwork between consultant specialists and GPs. They will be helped, supported and cared for close to home, without having to go into hospital, which will have a positive knock-on effect right through the system.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Minister very much for his positive answers, and I thank the Minister and the Government for the giant steps they are taking to improve the NHS; we are encouraged by that. While the Government have rolled out major changes to the GP contract in England to improve access to same-day appointments, the situation in Northern Ireland, as he will know, is critical. Patients back home are struggling to get GP appointments, waiting times are long and workforce shortages are acute.

I know from past questions that the Minister has a good working relationship with Mike Nesbitt, the Health Minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly. What discussions has he had with the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to ensure that local GP services in Northern Ireland work in parallel with the new guidance in England so that patients are not left behind?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Member for his kind words about the Government’s work. I do have an excellent relationship with the Minister in Northern Ireland. Devolution is vital to the Government, and we are certainly not in the business of trying to micromanage what is happening both across the regions of England and in the devolved nations of our United Kingdom, but it is clear that there should be learning in both directions. When I speak to the Northern Ireland Minister, we are clear that we want to see the best possible performance and outcomes right across our United Kingdom. I look forward to continuing to work with him on that basis.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The beautiful and vibrant yet very isolated community of Coniston has had a GP practice for the last 200 years or so, but it runs the risk of losing it this year. Its GPs, who were wonderful, retired last summer and a caretaker service is being provided. Bids have been invited and there has been much interest, but no bid has been made. The reason is that the finances are really marginal at such a small surgery where people cannot go anywhere else. There is an answer, and I want to ask the Minister whether he might intervene and talk to the ICB to help us to get there. If the dispensing contract were to be let jointly with the GP contract, that would make it viable, and I know of GPs who would be interested if that were to happen. Will he talk to the ICB to ensure that that flexibility is applied so that we can save the surgery in Coniston for the next 200 years?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. It would be deeply troubling if such an important service to the community were to be removed, so I would certainly be happy to speak to him. Perhaps he would like to write to me to provide more details. Looking to the medium to longer term, the review of the Carr-Hill formula could well end up benefiting communities such as the one he has mentioned, because remoteness and rurality will be an important factor in the Carr-Hill review, but I accept that that might be a bit too far off for what sounds like a more urgent issue. If he would like to write to me, I am sure we can look into that.

Dental Workforce Expansion and Contract Reforms

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

Restoring NHS dentistry is one of the Government’s top priorities. The Government are taking urgent action to improve NHS dentistry in the short term and laying the foundations to make it fit for the future.

Expanding the dental workforce is crucial to our ambitions. The Minister of State for Skills and I have written to the Chair of the Office for Students to increase the maximum fundable limit for dental school places in England from 809 to 859 places. This is the first sustained expansion of dental training since 2007 and will take effect from the 2027-28 academic year.

As announced in our 10-year health plan, we will make it a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practice in the NHS for a minimum period. Our intention is that this requirement will apply to individuals entering a dental course of study from the 2027-28 academic year. We will consult on the details of this requirement in due course.

The OfS has statutory responsibility for allocating funding for dental school places. The Minister of State for Skills and I have asked that the OfS focuses the expansion on new dental schools approved by the General Dental Council, but which do not currently receive Government funding for places.

I have also announced the award of £421,850 in one-off grant funding to the Royal College of Surgeons of England to support a rapid expansion of its “licence in dental surgery” exam. The LDS is one of the exams that dentists who have qualified overseas can pass to be eligible for registration with the GDC, a legal requirement to practise dentistry in the UK. In addition, the GDC has appointed UCL Consultants Ltd as the new provider for the overseas registration exam from 1 April 2026, with new contractual arrangements set to result in a significant increase to the number of dentists joining the register annually from 2028-29 via this route.

There is currently a significant backlog of overseas-qualified dentists waiting to take either the LDS exam or the ORE. Many candidates are already based in the United Kingdom and possess the skills to make a significant positive impact on NHS dental care.

These announcements will mean more NHS dentists, more NHS appointments and better oral health.

The Government are also committed to fundamental reform of the dental contract by the end of this Parliament, with a focus on matching resources to need, improving access, promoting prevention and rewarding dentists fairly, while enabling the whole dental team to work to the top of their capability. This is our ambition, and it will take time to get right.

In summer 2025, we took an important first step, with a public consultation on proposals to address some of the pressing issues that dental teams face and support them to spend more time on patients with the greatest need. We published our response in December.

We have laid the first amendments to the National Health Service (General Dental Services Contracts) Regulations 2005, the National Health Service (Personal Dental Services Agreements) Regulations 2005, and the National Health Service (Dental Charges) Regulations 2005, in support of these reforms in Parliament. These amendments will come into force from the 1 April 2026 and will:

Embed the provision of urgent care into the dental contract, supported by increased payments for dentists delivering this care, making it easier for patients to get rapid support through the NHS.

Support increased use of cost-effective, evidence-based prevention interventions for children through introducing a new stand-alone fluoride varnish treatment for delivery by dental nurses, and by increasing the remuneration associated with fissure sealant treatments, therefore reducing the opportunities for disease progression.

Alongside these amendments, we will also lay the National Health Service (Dental Charges) (Amendment) Regulations 2026 before Parliament to increase dental patient charges in England from 1 April 2026.

NHS dental patient charges provide an important revenue source for NHS dentistry and are typically uplifted on 1 April each financial year. We uplift the rate at the same point each year and for the 2026-27 financial year, the charges will be uplifted by approximately 1.66%, which is now a below-inflation increase. Dental patients will benefit from the continued provision that this important revenue supports.

From 1 April 2026 the dental charge payable for a band 1 course of treatment and urgent treatments will rise by 50p, from £27.40 to £27.90. For a band 2 course of treatment, there will be an increase of £1.30 from £75.30 to £76.60. A band 3 course of treatment will increase by £5.40 from £326.70 to £332.10

We will continue to provide financial support to those who need it most through a range of dental charge exemptions. Patients remain exempt if they are:

under 18, or under 19 and in full-time education;

pregnant or had a baby in the previous 12 months;

being treated in an NHS hospital and your treatment is carried out by the hospital dentist—patients may have to pay for any dentures or bridges;

receiving low-income benefits, or you are under 20 and a dependant of someone receiving low-income benefits.

Support also remains available through the NHS low income scheme for those not eligible for exemptions or full remission.

These reforms are an important step, but not the end point, and we will continue to go further before the end of this Parliament.

[HCWS1392]

Adult Cerebral Palsy: National Service Specification

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Daniel Francis) for securing this important debate. Many Members in this House speak on issues of importance to their constituents; far fewer bring the depth of personal experience, the understanding and the long-term perspective that he has of this issue. His own experiences of caring for a child with cerebral palsy reflect the realities faced every day by parents and carers across the country, and he speaks with such compassion and authority.

Adults with cerebral palsy make up a significant but often overlooked part of our population—around 130,000 people across the UK. For far too long, they have been “invisible to the NHS”, in the words of the cerebral palsy charter. Although cerebral palsy is a lifelong neurological condition, we frequently see well-structured, multidisciplinary paediatric care systems simply evaporating when people reach the age of 18. Adults are left navigating a fragmented system with no clear pathways, limited specialist input and inconsistent recognition of their needs.

We know that adults with cerebral palsy face disproportionately high risks of chronic pain, fatigue, mobility loss, falls, respiratory illness and cardiovascular disease—harms that are preventable with co-ordinated, proactive care. Young adults who have both cerebral palsy and a learning disability often receive better support, because they can access well-established learning disability pathways that provide structured reviews, specialist teams and co-ordinated care. By contrast, young adults with cerebral palsy alone often fall outside those pathways, and therefore struggle to access the same level of timely, proactive support, despite having significant and lifelong needs.

On the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford made about ringfenced funding, we expect ICBs to commission services for people with cerebral palsy based on local population need, and informed by NICE guidance and national service specifications. That approach is consistent with the wider NHS financial framework, which does not create condition-specific funding pots, but rather supports local systems to make evidence-based decisions across all long-term conditions. Similarly, on extending the qualities and outcomes framework, or QOF, to incorporate the creation of general practice-level cerebral palsy registers, we are operating in a very challenging fiscal environment. QOF indicators must be evidence based, deliverable at a national scale and balanced against the need to reduce administrative pressures on general practice.

Current policy is that ICBs should use NICE guidance and national service specifications to commission appropriate local services, rather than creating condition-specific national incentives. Although we have no plans at present to commission any formal gap analysis of adherence to, or non-compliance with, NICE guidelines, I wish to remind all ICBs of their responsibilities and the importance of adhering to those guidelines.

NHS England’s revised service specification for adult specialised neurology services, which was published in August last year and comes into effect next month, represents an important step forward in improving care for adults with cerebral palsy. For the first time, it sets clear expectations for how people with lifelong neurological conditions, including cerebral palsy, should move between general practice, community services and specialist centres.

The specification requires integrated care boards and specialist centres to organise services using a population health approach, ensuring equitable access to both general and specialist neurology services and oversight from multidisciplinary teams. That means better communication between GPs and specialist services, clearer and more consistent referral pathways and stronger recognition that cerebral palsy is a lifelong condition that requires timely review and escalation when needs change.

On cerebral palsy specifically, the service specification mandates a networked, multidisciplinary model for adult cerebral palsy care, emphasising integrated care pathways, structured transition from ages 13 to 14 and annual reviews for complex needs. It ensures equitable access to specialists, specialised treatments such as botulinum toxin and requires services to address physical and communicative barriers to care. Those changes will directly support early intervention, reduce unwarranted variation between local systems and help to embed more proactive, joined-up primary and specialist care, improving outcomes, continuity and quality of life for adults with cerebral palsy.

The updated neurology service specification ensures that cerebral palsy is embedded within a broader national framework, strengthening national expectations for adult cerebral palsy care. One of the most important ways we are strengthening support for adults with cerebral palsy is by improving awareness and understanding within primary care. The service specification now requires integrated care boards and specialist centres to work much more closely with GPs, strengthening communication and clarifying referral pathways so that primary care clinicians understand when an adult with cerebral palsy requires specialist review or escalation.

That is crucial, because too many adults report difficulty in securing informed support in general practice or face long delays in being referred to clinicians with expertise in neuro-disability. Those new expectations are designed to ensure that GPs have the confidence and the clarity they need to identify emerging concerns, initiate timely investigations and support adults whose needs may change as they age.

Importantly, the specification also strengthens national recognition of cerebral palsy as a lifelong condition, helping to embed more consistent, informed support for adults across primary care settings. That includes the requirement for services to identify barriers to access and make reasonable adjustments for disabled people. That is an important safeguard for adults with cerebral palsy, many of whom experience pain, fatigue, visual perceptual changes, challenges or communication needs that can affect their interaction with health services. These reforms ensure that GPs are supported by a clearer national framework, better referral pathways and stronger system expectations.

As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford today, too many adults with cerebral palsy feel that their support drops away as they transition out of paediatric services. That is exactly why the reforms we are delivering through our 10-year health plan are so critical to strengthening the support available for people with cerebral palsy throughout their lives.

Our 10-year health plan sets out a vision for a health and care system that is more personalised, more integrated and more proactive for people with long-term and complex conditions, including cerebral palsy. That means moving away from reactive care based on crisis points towards lifelong support that anticipates needs, prevents deterioration and joins up specialist community and primary care services. The plan focuses on delivering more care in the community, making greater use of technology and building a more preventive health service that supports people to stay well for longer.

Our 10-year health plan will ensure that people with complex needs are supported to be active participants in their own care. As part of that, 95% of people with complex needs or long-term conditions will have an agreed personalised care plan by 2027. Care plans will be a feature of the developing neighbourhood health service, which will deliver more care in local communities and move away from a one-size-fits-all approach, giving people more power and choice over the care that they receive.

Work is under way to determine the definition of complex needs in the context of that target and how care plans will be delivered in the future, including who will be best placed to co-ordinate and support their delivery. We know that key shared decision making is central to patients’ ongoing care, and care plans will look to promote that further. In developing future models of care planning, we will continue to take into account the varied experiences and needs of people with different conditions, such as cerebral palsy.

We also recognise the importance of preventive, proactive care, including annual reviews, as recommended in NICE guidance for adults with cerebral palsy. Although not currently mandated through the quality and outcomes framework, those reviews remain an important mechanism for identifying changes in mobility, pain, fatigue and mental health, and for ensuring that people are offered appropriate interventions early. The 10-year health plan’s focus on personalised and proactive care will support integrated care boards to improve access to those reviews as part of a more consistent offer for adults with cerebral palsy.

The plan will also ensure that no young person is lost in the gaps between children’s and adult services, a point at which many families tell us that they feel most vulnerable. NHS England’s children and young people transformation programme provides a clear nought-to-25 model of care to achieve that. For young people with cerebral palsy, that means earlier preparation for transition, co-ordinated support from a multidisciplinary network and clearer expectations for how professionals should plan and hand over care.

No young adult with cerebral palsy should reach their 18th birthday and face a cliff edge. They have waited far too long for the NHS to acknowledge their existence in policy, planning and commissioning. They deserve the dignity of services that reflect the reality of their lifelong condition. They deserve the best, and we are delivering improvements through integrated, system-wide reforms designed to support lifelong person-centred care.

The steps under way provide a more effective and sustainable foundation for improving outcomes for adults with cerebral palsy. Again, I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford for his tireless advocacy and work to ensure that this issue receives the attention that it deserves. I congratulate him, once again, on securing this important debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Healthcare in Rural Areas

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Wednesday 4th March 2026 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Blake Stephenson) on securing this vital debate. I am also grateful to other hon. Members for making excellent contributions this afternoon.

We know that the NHS faces pressures all over the country, with rural communities experiencing unique health and wellbeing challenges shaped by geography, demography, infrastructure and access to services. Our 10-year health plan is a commitment to rewire our NHS, with the three shifts to improve access to healthcare for everyone—no matter where you live or how much you earn. Those three shifts—from hospital to community, sickness to prevention and analogue to digital—will support neighbourhood and community health services in getting the investment they need, and will greatly expand and improve access to digital services, bringing healthcare closer to everyone’s home.

The hon. Member focused quite a lot of his speech on our emerging neighbourhood health strategy. I will provide some further detail in response to some of his points. He highlighted the important differences between urban and rural. We recognise that neighbourhood services will need to look different across rural and urban areas to best meet the needs of each community. That is why their delivery will be locally led, with local systems determining how neighbourhood health is designed for their area. That work will start in the areas of greatest need, including rural towns and villages.

The hon. Member and others also asked about the definition of neighbourhoods in rural areas. First, neighbourhoods are natural communities that are recognisable by local residents. Secondly, neighbourhoods will typically have a population of around 50,000 people, but coherent geography is more important for defining neighbourhoods than population size. Thirdly, the geography of the neighbourhood will be determined locally by integrated care boards in partnership with their strategic partners, particularly local authorities.

The hon. Member also asked how rural areas will benefit from neighbourhood health. Neighbourhood health provides the unifying framework that will bring together what is already under way across primary care, community services, urgent care, prevention, digital, estates and population health more broadly. The neighbourhood health service will make it easier for people to access care closer to where they live, including in neighbourhood health centres. Delivery will be locally led, with systems determining how neighbourhood health is designed to meet local population need. That will factor in how services may need to look different across rural and urban areas.

The neighbourhood health service will also move us towards a fully digitally enabled health service. We are striving for digital services to improve access, experiences and outcomes for the widest range of people based on their preferences, as any digital healthcare benefit will be limited if people remain digitally excluded. We are working closely with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology on the issues raised around improving access to broadband.

To deliver neighbourhood health services, the 10-year health plan introduces two new contracts, including one to create multi-neighbourhood providers covering populations of around 250,000 people. That will unlock the advantages and efficiencies possible from greater-scale working across all GP practices and small neighbourhood providers within the footprint. We will start in the areas of greatest need where healthy life expectancy is lowest, which includes rural towns. By targeting places where healthy life expectancy is lowest, we will deliver healthcare closer to home for those who need it most. Neighbourhood health plans will also be drawn up by local government, the NHS and its partners. The integrated care board will bring those together into a population health improvement plan for its footprint and will use that to inform commissioning decisions.

The medium-term planning framework, covering 2026-27 to 2028-29, sets out proposals for the further use of advice and guidance, asking systems to ensure all referrals go through a single point of access. That delivers a robust approach to triage so that patients are cared for closer to home, and there are fewer out-patient appointments in secondary care. That framework will also require a significant reduction in the number of clinically unnecessary follow-ups.

Turning to general practice, which came up a lot in the debate, we absolutely recognise the challenges facing rural communities in accessing GP services. We are expanding capacity across England, including to the areas that need it most. We are investing over £480 million extra into GP services this year, including investment in the primary care workforce, ensuring places like Mid Bedfordshire get the resources and GPs that they need.

Since October 2024, we have invested £160 million into the additional roles reimbursement scheme, which has supported the recruitment of over 2,000 GPs—smashing our manifesto pledge of 1,000 additional GPs. Furthermore, the introduction of a practice-level GP reimbursement scheme, worth £292 million, will enable practices to hire additional GPs or fund extra sessions with existing GPs. We are also seeing the results of those broad efforts. I am absolutely delighted that patient satisfaction has risen by over 15% since July 2024, from 60% to 75%, and an additional 6.8 million GP appointments have been delivered compared with the same period last year.

We know that patients are struggling to access NHS dentistry services, particularly in rural areas. To address that, we are reforming the dental contract to match resources to need and to improve access. As a first step, our 2026 reforms are focused on improving the dental contract to deliver the right care to the right people, including those in rural areas, while incentivising NHS dentists to provide more NHS care, with additional urgent appointments and new pathways for patients with complex needs. We are also continuing to recruit dentists under the golden hello scheme, which offers dentists £20,000 to work in underserved areas.

Urgent and emergency care is also a challenge for rural areas. We are ensuring that the country gets the care it needs, when it needs it. We launched our urgent and emergency care plan for 2025-26, supported by a substantial £450 million of capital investment. That will enable the upgrade of hundreds of ambulances and the expansion of urgent and emergency care capacity, reducing A&E wait times and getting more ambulances back on the road, more quickly.

Rural adult social care services are really important. Local authorities are responsible for shaping their care markets to meet the diverse needs of local people. However, the Government are also committed to ensuring adult social care funding reflects the costs that different communities face, which is why we have updated the formula used to distribute funding for adult social care to local authorities to include a remoteness adjustment. That means that the funding distribution better reflects the cost of providing care in different parts of the country. To give the local picture in the constituency of the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, between 2025-26 and 2028-29, central Bedfordshire is set to see its notional allocation for adult social care services increase by £11.3 million, which is more than a 7% cash increase above budgeted adult social care spend.

I want to say a quick word on finance. To support remote or sparsely populated areas, the ICB target allocations formula includes an emergency ambulance cost adjustment to reflect longer travel times in sparsely populated areas; a travel time adjustment to the community services formula to reflect the additional time it takes patients to travel between appointments in sparsely populated areas; and an adjustment to support hospitals with 24-hour A&E services that are remote from the wider hospital network and have unavoidably higher costs. Those adjustments help to support rural communities in accessing the health services that they need.

I hope that I have managed to touch on some of the issues raised. It is a wide-ranging topic because rural healthcare, by definition, requires many different services. We absolutely recognise the challenges, and we recognise that we still have a mountain to climb before we can get our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future.

We believe that through the three shifts—from hospital to community, treatment to prevention and analogue to digital—and the strategies that we are pushing through on workforce, digital, better support for general practice, and neighbourhood health, we can get our NHS back on its feet and fit for the future. Once again, I thank all hon. Members present and I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire on securing this debate.

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

I call Blake Stephenson to wind up in 20 seconds.

GP Contract 2026-27

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

General practice is the front door of the NHS, delivering millions of appointments each year and providing trusted, continuous care to patients in every community. The Government are committed to supporting general practice, ensuring it is sustainable and at the heart of a modern neighbourhood health service.

I am pleased to inform the House of the outcome of the 2026-27 general practice contract consultation. The final package reflects commitments in the 10-year health plan, including ending the “8 am scramble”, improving timely access to care, tackling GP unemployment and supporting a shift towards prevention. This builds on recent improvements in patient experience, with the monthly health insight survey by the Office for National Statistics showing that in December 2025, over 75% of people said it was easy to make contact with their GP—up from just under 61 % when this Government came into office.

The 2026-27 GP contract includes a £485 million funding uplift, taking total contract investment to over £13.8 billion. This investment is focused on the changes that matter most to patients: easier access to GP appointments and more GPs working in practices. Through an investment in GP recruitment of circa £190 million per annum via the additional roles reimbursement scheme over the past 16 months, the Government have recruited 3,000 newly qualified GPs, preventing them from graduating into unemployment. Growing GP capacity is the most effective way to improve access and for the first time, £292 million of funding is being ringfenced for a practice-level GP recruitment scheme. We estimate this could translate to 1,600 full-time equivalent GPs. The aim is to increase GP capacity that can be specifically focused on improving patient access.

The contract also includes a new requirement that all patients who are deemed clinically urgent by their GP practice must be dealt with on the same day. Delivery of this requirement is supported by the ringfenced GP recruitment scheme.

The contract also strengthens the role of general practice in prevention and neighbourhood health services, including targeted action to improve childhood vaccination uptake. It supports high deprivation areas where coverage has historically been lower, and ensures all those eligible are invited for lung cancer screening through improved data sharing, enables earlier cancer diagnosis. It also includes a £25 million investment to increase referrals into structured weight management and obesity support services for patients who need them most.

This contract embeds advice and guidance into core activity, supporting delivery of the plan for change by enabling more patients to receive the right care without unnecessary referral. This will help reduce pressure on elective services and help tackle waiting lists, while improving patient experience.

This year, the Department of Health and Social Care widened the consultation to engage stakeholders from across the primary care system including GPC England, the Royal College of General Practitioners, National Voices, Institute of General Practice Management, Healthwatch England, the NHS Confederation and the National Association of Primary Care. This broader consultation enabled constructive feedback from across the system, helping to refine proposals and improve the final contract package for both patients and practices.

This demonstrates the Government’s commitment to working constructively with the profession and system partners, and to ensuring that general practice is supported to meet the needs of patients now and in the future.

[HCWS1359]

Oral Answers to Questions

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 24th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Natalie Fleet (Bolsover) (Lab)]

23. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of access to NHS dental services.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

We know that dentistry was left in crisis by the Conservatives, but this Government are determined to ensure that everyone can access a dentist when they need one. We have recently broadened access to dental appointments, so that patients who need more serious and ongoing treatment no longer miss out. Between April and October 2025, we delivered 1.8 million more treatments than in the same period before the general election.

[Callum Anderson]

I have a constituent who is awaiting a root canal and crown treatment to save her tooth. She has been quoted £400 for NHS treatment with a 60% chance of success, and £1,300 for private healthcare with a 90% success rate. Hopefully the Minister agrees that this mismatch risks undermining confidence in NHS dentistry. What steps is he taking to reform the NHS dental contract, so that constituents like mine can receive timely and high-quality care that is within financial reach?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am very sorry to hear about the plight of my hon. Friend’s constituent, and I would be more than happy to look into the specifics of her case. The sad reality is that after 14 years of Tory neglect and incompetence, we have ended up with a two-tier dentistry system. This Government are determined to ensure that high-quality NHS dentistry is available to everyone who needs it. The 2026 reforms that I announced on 16 December will help patients who have complex needs by creating a new care pathway, backed by tariffs for dentists of between £250 and £700, which could save patients up to £225 in fees. Our 2026 measures, combined with long-term contract reform, will indeed enable timely, high-quality treatment that is within financial reach.

[Natalie Fleet]

Fourteen years of Conservative rule has consequences for the children in my constituency. A quarter of them have tooth decay—[Interruption.] Conservative Members can shake their heads as much as they like, but this is the real-world impact of the decisions that they made. Those children are some of the most deprived in Derbyshire, and the integrated care board has found that they are more likely than wealthier constituents 3 miles up the road to have tooth decay. I am pleased that we are fixing dentistry. We are getting more urgent dentist appointments and we have the roll-out of supervised toothbrushing in schools, but we need to do more. What more are this Government doing to address this inequality and help the children in my constituency who are in pain?

[Stephen Kinnock]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Conservatives failed our children’s health; tooth decay is the most common reason for hospital admissions for five to nine-year-olds. That is a truly shameful, Dickensian state of affairs. We have provided Derbyshire county council with £82,000 for this year’s supervised toothbrushing programme, with further funding agreed till 2028-29. I am delighted that, of the 42,000 increase in the number of treatments in the Derby and Derbyshire ICB area, 19,000 were for children, and by extending the soft drinks industry levy we will protect kids’ teeth from decay—a policy that is emblematic of the shift from treatment to prevention that is at the heart of our 10-year plan.

[Sir Ashley Fox (Bridgwater) (Con)]

My constituents continue to find it very difficult to get an appointment with an NHS dentist. What steps is the Minister taking to encourage dentists in rural areas, so that my constituents can have access to an NHS dentist?

[Stephen Kinnock]

We come to this Chamber month in, month out for these oral questions but we never hear an apology from those on the Opposition Benches for the mess in which they left NHS dentistry. For the Conservatives, sorry really does seem to be the hardest word.

With regard to the hon. Gentleman’s question, we have delivered 1.8 million additional appointments between April and October 2025, compared with the same period before the general election. I would be happy to furnish him with the precise numbers of how many more have been provided in his constituency and his ICB area. He can watch his post box for that information.

[Adrian Ramsay (Waveney Valley) (Green)]

The Daily Mirror reports that of the nearly 1 million urgent dental appointments that have been commissioned by integrated care boards since April, 900,000 have not been taken up because of strict rules around the scope of treatment. Meanwhile, in my constituency and around the country, too many people are going without the treatment that they need. Will the Minister update us on when the Government expect to meet their targets on urgent appointments?

[Stephen Kinnock]

Our manifesto commitment was about improving access to urgent dental care, and that is precisely what we have done by commissioning hundreds of thousands of additional urgent treatments. It became clear as we were working through that process that the clinical definition was too narrow and out of step with the common-sense interpretation, so we acted on the advice of the chief dental officer and broadened the definition. From this April, urgent care will be embedded in the contract, and of course we continue to work with the sector on long-term contract reform.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

Everyone in this House knows that NHS dentistry was allowed to fall apart under the Conservatives, resulting in DIY tooth extractions, people being forced to go to A&E because they are in pain, and children suffering in every corner of the country. Last year, 38,000 children in Shropshire did not see a dentist. In Surrey, that number was 100,000 and in Sussex it was 133,000. That is a disgrace. The Government promised an extra 700,000 urgent appointments to fight this crisis, but that promise looks set to have been broken in the previous year. Will the Minister today highlight in black and white how many extra urgent appointments were actually delivered last year, rather than simply commissioned?

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I have just pointed out to the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay), we have broadened the definition, because the clinical definition of “urgent” was simply not in line with the common-sense interpretation. People removing their own teeth in DIY dentistry were not fitting into the classification of “urgent”. We have changed that categorisation. As a result of that, I am pleased to confirm that we have delivered 1.8 million additional appointments and treatments this year compared with the same period last year—April to October 2025. We will continue to work on that basis of embedding urgent care into the contract, as I announced on 16 December, in the 2026 reforms that we are carrying out.

[Sureena Brackenridge (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)]

8. What steps his Department is taking to improve ambulance response times.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Lab)]

9. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of access to NHS dental services in Morecambe and Lunesdale constituency.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

We inherited a broken NHS dental system in which many people were unable to access a dentist when they need one, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency, but we are making real progress, having increased the number of NHS treatments by 1.8 million between April and October 2025 compared with the same period before the general election. As a result of this nationwide increase, I am pleased to report that 89,000 more NHS dental treatments were delivered between April and October last year in the Lancashire and South Cumbria integrated care board area, which of course includes my hon. Friend’s constituency.

[Lizzi Collinge]

One of my constituents contacted me because their spouse is bedbound and cannot get dental care at home, so he gets no routine care. He recently waited three months for an emergency extraction—something he could have had on the same day if he was not disabled. What work is going on to help my constituents access the care they need?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am sorry to hear about the plight of my hon. Friend’s constituent. I will, of course, be more than happy to meet her and look into the specifics of the case. Specialised dental services have a vital role to play in providing dental treatment to vulnerable people in settings such as care homes. In many cases, this is about teamwork and integration, ensuring that primary dental care is working in lockstep with adult social care. There is clearly some room for improvement in some areas. I would be happy to work with her to ensure that this issue gets resolved.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

10. What steps his Department is taking to help prevent ill health.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alison Griffiths (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

15. What steps he is taking to increase access to care in the community.

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

Through our 10-year health plan and the shift from hospital to community, our new neighbourhood health service will benefit millions. It is underpinned by 120 new neighbourhood health centres by 2030, alongside the supercharging of community diagnostic centres, which will deliver faster, more accessible care, with over 100 sites open 12 hours a day, seven days a week. This massive expansion will transform community access for millions of patients, regardless of postcode.

[Alison Griffiths]

I am delighted to hear the Minister’s response. Zachary Merton hospital in Rustington was closed temporarily, but that closure became permanent and the site is being progressed for disposal. More than half of residents in Rustington are elderly, and rely on intermediate and step-down care. They have not been consulted on the permanent closure, despite assurances from Sussex community NHS foundation trust and NHS Sussex integrated care board. Will the Minister confirm whether he considers that a substantial variation in NHS services? Will he consider exercising his call-in powers before the site is irreversibly sold?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I am not familiar with the details of that case, but if the hon. Lady writes to me I would be more than happy to take the issue up. These matters are determined by the ICBs and trusts, and the Government are not in the business of micromanaging what is happening out there in the field. We believe that people who are closest to our citizens are the best people to take those decisions, but we do expect the right outcomes. I would be happy to work with the hon. Lady on that basis.

[Ms Abena Oppong-Asare (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)]

Women with the painful and incurable condition of endometriosis have suffered stigma and ill health for far too long, and despite the condition impacting one in 10 women, a diagnosis takes over eight years on average. Will the Minister make sure that the new women’s health strategy includes stronger training, better awareness, and faster support for women?

[Stephen Kinnock]

This is a vital issue. Endometriosis is a serious challenge for so many women across our country, and I confirm that it is an integral part of the strategy. I am sure she will be pleased to see the outcome of that strategy as it moves forward.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool West Derby) (Lab)]

16. What assessment his Department has made of the potential impact of private finance initiatives on the NHS.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)]

Catherine from Redbourn has shared that she has to wait weeks for a GP appointment, yet her village faces an increase in residents of up to 70%, which means thousands of new patients. Some of that is through speculative developments. Does the Minister agree that councils should have the powers to ensure that planning approvals are dependent on first securing healthcare to serve those new residents? Will he commit to ensuring that NHS planning cycles are aligned with housing developments to ensure that communities do not have to wait for weeks, months or years?

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

On the subject of GP access, I am delighted that 75% of patients now say it is easy to contact their GP, which is a sizeable increase of 14 percentage points since July 2024—that is a really positive development that I am sure the hon. Lady welcomes. Turning to planning, it is very important that the integrated care board, the council and the developers are joined up together, and we need to ensure that happens. There is also the primary care utilisation and modernisation fund, which the hon. Lady’s constituents may be interested in.

[Peter Swallow (Bracknell) (Lab)]

T9.   I am delighted that two mental health support teams are already at work in Bracknell Forest, supporting almost four-fifths of local pupils with timely, targeted mental health support. There is a lot more to do to fix the child and adolescent mental health services system, but could the Minister set out how school-based interventions are beginning to deliver change?

--- Later in debate ---

[Shockat Adam (Leicester South) (Ind)]

Vista is a 160-year-old charity serving people in Leicester and Leicestershire who are suffering from visual disabilities. Last year alone, it served 21,000 people, but sadly, it faces imminent closure if it cannot raise £2 million by the end of March. If that happens, the devastating effect on the national health service and the social care service will be unimaginable, so will the Minister meet me and other local MPs, as well as representatives of University Hospitals of Leicester, to discuss what we can do to save Vista?

[Stephen Kinnock]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question, and pay tribute to Vista for the outstanding work it is doing. Improving IT connectivity is a vital part of what we are doing, and the single point of access project is of relevance in that context. I would be more than happy if the hon. Gentleman wrote to me so that we can look at the issue he has raised.

[Paul Waugh (Rochdale) (Lab/Co-op)]

In Rochdale, we need more midwives to provide the safe staffing levels that our mums-to-be rightly expect, but newly qualified student midwives often find it difficult to find jobs when they qualify. Can the Minister explain exactly when the NHS workforce plan is due so that they can give reassurance to those newly qualified midwives that they will have a career in the NHS?

Adult Social Care, Tobacco and Vapes Consultation, and Urgent Dental Care

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Monday 23rd February 2026 Written Statements

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

I would like to inform the House of several updates from the Department of Health and Social Care over the February recess.

Social care: allowances uplift for working age adults & disabled facilities grant 2026-27

The Government have confirmed that they will be uplifting the social care allowances, which ensure that people drawing on adult social care retain sufficient income to cover essential living costs.

From 6 April 2026, these allowances will rise in line with consumer prices index inflation—3.8%—recognising pressures from rising food, clothing and utility costs. For working-age adults, we are going further: the minimum income guarantee will increase by 7%, the first above inflation rise in over a decade. This will put over £400 more a year into the pockets of more than 150,000 working-age disabled adults, or around £510 for those also receiving the disability premium.

This uplift protects disabled people on low incomes, supports greater choice and control, and forms part of our wider programme to build a stronger, fairer national care service. We will continue to work closely with local government, disabled people’s organisations and sector partners to ensure the system remains sustainable and responsive to people’s needs.

The Government can also confirm that £723 million will be made available for the disabled facilities grant in 2026-27. This grant helps eligible older and disabled people on low incomes to adapt their homes to make them safe and suitable for their needs so that they can remain independent. Practical changes include installing stairlifts, level-access showers, or ramps. The Government are also taking action to allocate disabled facilities grant funding to local authorities in England in a fairer, more evidence-based way from 2026-27, with transitional protections to allow local authorities time to adjust. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government has published the details of local authority allocations here. We expect funding to be distributed to local authorities in May.

Launch of consultation on smoke-free, heated tobacco-free and vape-free places in England

Smoking is the number one preventable cause of death, disability and ill health in England. Vaping is less harmful and can help adult smokers quit, but it is not without risks, and the long-term health effects are still being studied. Exposure to second-hand smoke can be particularly damaging for children, pregnant women and people with existing health conditions.

A consultation on smoke-free, heated tobacco-free and vape-free places in England is open until 6 May 2026. It sets out proposals to extend current indoor smoking restrictions to some outdoor places, specifically public children’s playgrounds, and outside certain health and social care settings and education settings.

The consultation also proposes to make indoor places that are already smoke-free places, heated tobacco-free and vape-free as well, and extending these restrictions to some outdoor places.

The consultation does not propose extending any measures to outdoor hospitality settings or private outdoor spaces.

Responses will inform the measures that are ultimately taken forward and following the consultation, we intend to make and implement secondary legislation during the course of this Parliament.

Urgent dentistry appointments

The Government are committed to ensuring people can access urgent dental care when they need it. Over the past year, integrated care boards have been commissioning additional urgent dental appointments and there is now an urgent care safety net available in all areas of the country.

From April 2026, we will cement our commitment to urgent care by making it a requirement for high street dentists to offer a minimum number of urgent appointments, including to patients who are new to the practice.

We have listened to clinical advice from the chief dental officer for England, as well as feedback from the sector that the current definition of the national target, focused on clinically urgent care, is too narrow and has meant that some patients with serious and ongoing needs are still missing out.

We will therefore broaden the scope of our pledge to deliver not just additional urgent appointments, but more appointments of all types. This will open up capacity to more patients, preventing people resorting to DIY dentistry, while retaining the urgent care safety net.

Data published on Thursday 19 February shows that the NHS delivered an extra 1.8 million courses of dental treatment over the first seven months of 2025-26 compared to the same period in the year up to the general election and almost half of these were delivered to children.

[HCWS1345]

Oak Park Community Clinic

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

I note that the policy lead for this area is the Minister for Secondary Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth). She is unable to be here today and sends her apologies, but I will report back to her and am sure that she will be more than happy to accept the request for a meeting to have further discussions.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Havant (Alan Mak) on securing this debate on the provision of diagnostic services in Havant, specifically at Oak Park community clinic. This matter is very important to his constituents, and it resonates more broadly in communities right across our country.

Diagnostic services are a critical part of our NHS. They are crucial for helping patients to get peace of mind about their symptoms or clarity on the next stage of their care. Reducing the waiting times for diagnostic tests is critical to achieving both our elective waiting time and cancer waiting time ambitions. Prior to this debate, the Department has received correspondence from GPs working in the hon. Member’s constituency on this very issue. I therefore completely understand his concerns and those of his constituents, and I hope that I can provide a helpful update on the situation and set out the steps being taken to resolve this issue.

Until recently, a range of diagnostic services were provided at Oak Park community clinic. Services were delivered in partnership between the NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight integrated care board and an independent healthcare provider, Practice Plus Group. As the hon. Member has said, Practice Plus Group took the decision, with limited notice, to move equipment for non-obstetric ultrasound, X-ray and echocardiography away from Oak Park community clinic to St Mary’s community hospital in Portsmouth. With regard to the request to meet to discuss the circumstances of the suspension of these services at Oak Park clinic, I will ensure that a request is passed on to my colleague, the Minister for Secondary Care.

I can inform the hon. Member that the closure took place because Practice Plus Group took the view that the lease no longer represented value for money. I can fully appreciate the disruption that this is causing in the Havant area for patients who now face longer travel times and inconvenience to receive care. I am aware that the ICB has communicated with all the referring organisations affected and is working to mitigate disruption, including reviewing alternative provision to ensure continuity of diagnostic services for patients in the Havant area. In the meantime, patients can be referred to Practice Plus Group services at the St Mary’s community health campus in Portsmouth for those diagnostic tests. The Queen Alexandra hospital in Cosham is also providing diagnostic services and is of course accessible to many patients across Havant. For some, it is likely that this will be more convenient and should be offered as a location for diagnostic tests.

The hon. Member will be aware that the Oak Park community diagnostic centre is also located at the Oak Park community clinic. The non-obstetric ultrasound service at the Oak Park community clinic was, until recently, provided as part of the community diagnostic centre. X-ray and echocardiography, while provided at the same site, are separate from the CDC operations. When the community diagnostic centre was first approved, Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust commissioned Practice Plus Group to deliver non-obstetric ultrasound activity for the centre. This arrangement would utilise Practice Plus Group’s equipment and rooms, with sonographers employed by the trust delivering the tests.

I can today confirm to the hon. Member and to the House that Portsmouth hospitals university NHS trust is preparing to recommence non-obstetric ultrasound at the Oak Park CDC this month. With financial support from NHS England’s national diagnostic programme, the trust has been able to purchase an additional scanner for this site. In the meantime, the Oak Park CDC continues to provide symptomatic mammography, ophthalmology assessment and peripheral neurophysiology assessments at the Oak Park community clinic site. The hon. Member asked about the possibility of temporary pop-up facilities to restore all services at Oak Park. I am informed that the ICB is working closely with Practice Plus Group to resolve this issue, and is looking for a solution to restore X-ray and echocardiography at the Oak Park community clinic for patients.

Community provision of diagnostic services, such as those at the Oak Park clinic, are a central plank of our plan to make the NHS fit for the future. We are committed to bringing more diagnostic services into community settings and to making healthcare more accessible to patients who might face barriers to hospital access, including those with mobility issues, caring responsibilities or limited transport options. We have committed, as part of our elective reform plan, to build up to five more CDCs as part of our £600 million capital investment for diagnostics in 2025-26.

We are also working to ensure that more CDCs are open 12 hours a day, seven days a week, to deliver more same-day tests and consultations, and an expanded range of tests. Since the Government came into office in July 2024, CDCs have delivered more than 10.9 million tests and scans. CDCs are a vital step in supporting our shift from hospital to community. They provide access to vital tests, scans and checks, closer to home, for patients with busy working lives. We are setting clear diagnostic performance expectations for NHS providers. Our medium-term planning guidance sets out the ambition for improvement in performance against the diagnostic six-week wait constitutional standard, so that, by March 2029, no more than 1% of patients wait more than six weeks from referral for a diagnostic test. We have set the interim milestone that, by March 2027, no more than 20% of patients wait over six weeks.

We recognise that significant improvements will be required in the performance of NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB. Performance is currently at 29.5%, as of November 2025, so there is clearly a long way to go. In 2025-26, NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB was allocated £49.3 million of capital funding from the constitutional standards recovery fund announced by the Chancellor at the spending review, with the aim of supporting NHS performance across secondary and emergency care, including by supporting new capacity and productivity improvements in diagnostic services. It is part of over £6 billion of additional capital investment over five years across new diagnostic, elective and urgent care capacity, to deliver the improvements to the NHS that patients need and deserve, so that the NHS is there for them when they need it.

I thank the hon. Member for securing this important debate.

Question put and agreed to.

NHS Dentists

Stephen Kinnock Excerpts

Thursday 5th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for North Down (Alex Easton) on securing this important debate. I thank him for his work to raise awareness of the challenges facing dental patients in his constituency and across the United Kingdom. It is vital that we work together, across the four nations of the United Kingdom, to tackle the long-standing problems that adults and children have been facing in accessing an NHS dentist when they need one. I also thank other hon. Members and hon. Friends for their powerful contributions to the debate. I know that access to dentistry is a matter of continuing concern for Members and their constituents.

The concerns Members have raised support the many testimonies I have heard directly from patients, dentists, members of the wider dental team, and their representatives. In July 2024, we inherited a dental system in crisis. That is evident in the adult oral health survey of 2023, which provides the first picture of adult oral health in England for more than a decade, and shows poor oral health in adults. Among adults with their own teeth, over two fifths—41%—showed evidence of obvious decay, 93% had some form of gum disease, and 19% had one or more potentially urgent dental conditions. This Government are determined to fix that.

Our 10-year health plan confirms our commitment to transforming NHS dentistry so that it is fit for future generations. We have established a platform for future success by reducing the NHS dentistry underspend from £392 million in 2023-24 to just £36 million. The decrease in underspend is leading to an increase in NHS dentistry, but I absolutely accept that there is still a long way to go. Over the past 18 months, the Government have made great strides in improving NHS dentistry, not just for patients but for the dental workforce delivering oral care to our nation. My immediate priority when taking up this ministerial post was to ensure that people who need an urgent dental appointment are prioritised and able to access the care that they need quickly. It is essential that we direct care towards those who need it most.

We all have a duty to reduce health inequalities, which are sorely felt in NHS dentistry. That is why, since last April, we have been making extra urgent dental appointments available to ensure that patients with urgent dental needs can get the treatment they require. Those extra appointments are available across the country, and are more heavily weighted towards the areas in which they are needed most. We are also incentivising high street dentists to offer further appointments in order to maximise availability for those in need of urgent care.

We recognise that access to NHS dental services remains a challenge in certain parts of the country. In addition to our urgent appointments, integrated care boards are recruiting dentists through the dental recruitment incentive scheme—known as the “golden hello” scheme. That initiative offers a financial incentive to encourage dentists to work in underserved areas for a minimum commitment of three years.

This Government have heard dentists’ concerns that they do not think the current dental contract is fit for purpose. Talks are under way, including with the British Dental Association, to scope our plans for potential changes. We remain open-minded and keen to consider how different payment models could best improve the delivery of care to dental patients. In reforming the dental contract, we want to focus on matching resources to need, improving access, promoting prevention and rewarding dentists fairly. We also want to enable the whole dental team to work to the top of their capabilities.

But reforming the dental contract is a significant challenge, and there are no quick fixes or easy answers. That is why in our 10-year health plan, we committed to fundamental reform of the dental contract by the end of this Parliament, with significant steps in 2026-27. Talks are under way with the British Dental Association, and we are making progress on these matters.

In addition to delivering fundamental contract reform over the longer term, we have already made significant progress through our 2026 reforms. We held a public consultation last summer on changes to the current NHS dental contract to address the pressing issues that dentists and dental teams said they were experiencing. The Government’s response, published in December, took account of the views of the dental sector as well as people with lived experience. Our reforms will utilise the existing dental contract to deliver the right care to the right people, while incentivising dentists to provide more NHS care. By prioritising patients with the greatest needs and making more efficient use of dentists’ time, the changes will ensure that the NHS dentistry budget delivers value for money for the taxpayer.

From 1 April, we will start to implement the reforms. For the first time, we are introducing provisions in the dental contract to embed urgent dental care appointments, making it easier for patients to access this care. We are increasing payments to dentists to deliver that care from £42 on average to £75 for that unit of dental activity. We are providing new treatment pathways for patients with complex treatment needs, paid at a set fee of around £250 or £700 depending on the pathway, while enabling and encouraging dentists to deliver more preventive care. These reforms will make full use of the existing dental contract, to ensure that patients receive the right care at the right time, while creating clear incentives for dentists to provide more NHS care. As I say, they will kick in from 1 April.

England has more than 38,000 registered dentists, of whom 10,700 are full-time equivalent general dentists delivering NHS care. As we take forward our reform programme to rebuild NHS dentistry, we are clear that strengthening the workforce is key to achieving our ambitions. This Government are committed to publishing a 10-year workforce plan to set out actions to create a workforce that is ready to deliver the transformed service set out in our overall 10-year health plan.

We are taking steps to increase the capacity of our dental workforce. As announced in our 10-year health plan, we will make it a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practise in the NHS for a minimum period. We intend that minimum period to be at least three years. That will mean more NHS dentists, more NHS appointments and better oral health.

[Adrian Ramsay]

I thank the Minister for highlighting the need for the dental workforce to be strengthened. We have a dental desert in East Anglia. The University of East Anglia stands ready to open a new dental school. It has permission from the General Dental Council but is awaiting the funded undergraduate dental places that will be needed to start training new dentists from 2027. Can the Minister set out how those places will be made available on the basis of regional need, so that dental deserts such as the east of England can start to build a sustainable dental workforce?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Kinnock]

I congratulate the University of East Anglia on its accreditation through the GDC as a dental school. That is a huge step in the right direction, and we strongly support it. The next step is that the Office for Students has to allocate places. The Government have not funded any new dental school places since 2007. I am fighting hard for those dental places to be made available. We are quite close, I hope, to being able to share some positive steps on that. The OfS makes the decisions about allocating the places, but it does take advice from Ministers. My counterpart in the Department for Education and I will be sending a letter to the OfS, with some advice on how it should make decisions about where dental places should be made available, and the fact that UEA has a new dental school is an important factor in those considerations.

I welcome the General Dental Council’s recent announcement confirming the appointment of a new provider for the overseas registration exam—the ORE. The new arrangements are set to more than double the annual number of dentists able to join the register via that route, and it represents a significant step forward in addressing workforce shortages and NHS patient access. I met the General Dental Council at the end of last year to discuss its comprehensive plan to address the current ORE waiting list, and to urge it to get that waiting list sorted, because frankly the backlogs were not acceptable. We are looking at an increase in the supply of overseas qualified dentists joining the GDC register. I expect the measures to be taken by the GDC to deliver substantial improvements to the international registration processes, enabling increased numbers of overseas qualified dentists to join the register more swiftly and efficiently.

We know that prevention is better than cure. Alongside urgently needed reforms to treat existing poor oral health, I am committed to improving oral health in this country, not just for children, but the wider population too. Water fluoridation is an effective public health intervention for reducing the prevalence of tooth decay and improving oral health inequalities. Under this Government, we will see much needed expansion of water fluoridation in the north-east of England, with further feasibility studies for other parts of the country.

We are already investing in integrated care boards to support supervised toothbrushing for three-to-five-year-old children, and our innovative partnership with Colgate-Palmolive will support up to 600,000 children to develop good oral health habits for life. We are working with all sectors of the food industry to make further progress on reducing levels of sugar in the everyday food and drink that people buy. This is to ensure that it is easier for people to make healthier choices. Oral cancer and periodontal diseases are directly caused by tobacco. Dental teams and local stop-smoking services can work collaboratively in a variety of ways.

We have already made important progress, but I accept that there is still a lot more to do and a long way to go. We are determined to ensure that everyone who needs an NHS dentist can secure one. Delivering that ambition will take time, and it is vital that we put in place solutions that work for both patients and the dental professionals who care for them.

Question put and agreed to.