Community Pharmacies: Devon and the South-west

Steve Race Excerpts

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rachel Gilmour]

I do agree. In addition to delivering formally commissioned services, pharmacies provide an alternative point of contact for the public for informal clinical advice. The 2024 pharmacy advice audit found that the average pharmacy carries out around 22 informal consultations per day, which is the equivalent of 1.3 million informal consultations taking place in community pharmacies every week.

[Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member on securing the debate. From the first day we met we have talked about getting this debate, so I am very pleased that it is happening. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on pharmacy. Does she agree that community pharmacies have a huge amount of potential to support patients with a range of services, which will support the NHS ten-year plan to move more care into the community and help prevent ill health in the first place? That is one of the main roles they can play in the future.

World AIDS Day

Steve Race Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Danny Beales) on securing this debate to mark World AIDS Day. Colleagues have made important points about the huge progress, both medically and socially, that we have made as a nation over recent years, but of course there is always more to do. In 2023, there were 132 people in Exeter diagnosed with HIV and accessing HIV care. It is estimated that around 5% of all people living with HIV in England are undiagnosed, so there will inevitably be people in Exeter living undiagnosed today. I therefore welcome the continued roll-out of opt-out testing to identify and support those people.

I want to touch briefly on two points. First, on the international picture, addressing inequalities in global health requires a country-led approach that puts grassroots communities in the driving seat. It is important, however, that such an approach includes an unflinching commitment to defending and extending human rights. The global HIV pandemic has demonstrated the importance of addressing human rights violations as a central tenet of driving down HIV rates. Today, UNAIDS releases its report into human rights and HIV/AIDS. The report, which includes a foreword by Sir Elton John, demonstrates that the world is not on track to end the HIV crisis, neither is it on track to meet the UN’s targets for societal enablers, which aim to reduce the social and legal impediments that limit access to lifesaving HIV services.

LGBT human rights are increasingly under attack from authoritarian Governments and otherwise democratic Governments whose elected leaders choose to vilify minority groups for political gain. That is becoming a central tenet in the playbook of extremist forces, which makes it all the more important for the UK Government to take a global lead in advocating for human rights if we want to reach our commitments on eradicating HIV transmissions.

Secondly, and very briefly, I want to use this opportunity to thank the many volunteers and activists across our country and around the world who have worked so hard to get us to the position we are in now. From caring for friends and relatives to protesting and setting up activist organisations, the fight against HIV and AIDS has always been led by committed individuals.

In particular, I want to recognise the work of Nick Perry, a much-loved and admired resident of Hackney who sadly and suddenly died recently. Nick was a polymath, an expert amateur historian, a keen advocate for good planning and place, a volunteer for London Pride and, importantly, an HIV education advocate who volunteered with the Terrence Higgins Trust. I recommend to everyone his comedy stand-up segment at Nerd Nite London, available on YouTube, which tackles HIV issues and sexual health in a very accessible way. He was incredibly generous with his time and was a great mentor to me and many others, and will be very much missed by everyone he met. My condolences remain with his husband, Andrew Grace.

People like Nick and many others in this country and around the world will always be the key to our collective ambition to end all new HIV transmissions. We must do everything we can as a Government to support them.

NHS Dentistry: South-west

Steve Race Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Steve Race (Exeter) (Lab)]

I am here to speak on behalf of Exeter residents about the parlous state of NHS dentistry in our city after 14 years of the Tory Government, who allowed NHS dentistry to fall into complete disrepair.

We have heard that the south-west is one of the most notorious dental deserts, but most troubling is the proportion of children who get to see a dentist. In Devon, it has dropped by a fifth, from about 61% of children in 2016 to 47% in 2024, well below the English average of 55%. The reality is truly shocking. Across the country, tooth decay is now the No. 1 reason why children are admitted to hospital, and more than 40,000 children in 2021-22 had teeth removed at hospitals across the UK. That is the case in Exeter too. The Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS foundation trust states in its annual accounts that tooth decay is still the most common reason for hospital admission in children aged between six and 10 years old. According to the oral health survey of five-year-old children, more than a fifth of children in Exeter—22%—have tooth decay by the time they are five.

I talked to one of my local primary schools in preparation for this debate, to get the views of its staff. They said that they know of multiple children who have had teeth removed due to a lack of dentistry and then had to miss school. Some children have joined reception with all of their teeth brown or blackened stumps. Children are missing school due to being in agony from toothache and having no dentist, and many families—and indeed teachers—are unable to find an NHS dentist that will take them on. It is truly shocking, and, as with many things, our primary schools do what they can to pick up the slack. This primary school already teaches children how to brush their teeth, and they do so each day in reception. Exeter’s NHS dentist crisis is not just having a detrimental impact on people’s teeth and health; it is having a detrimental impact on children’s education and on our economy. It is also having a detrimental impact on our local A&E department, which is already stretched to capacity. Tooth decay forced 740 patients to attend the emergency department between April 2022 and March 2023, according to NHS Digital data.

Comparing NHS regions, those in the south-west and south-east were least likely to have an NHS dentist and most likely to have a private one. Given that the cost of simply being accepted on to a private dentistry register can be upwards of £70 a month for a small family, before treatments are added in, this is clearly a cost of living issue for many.

As referenced already, the NHS dental budget across the south-west is underspent by more than £86 million in the financial year 2023-24. That is not due to any lack of demand, of course, but largely due to dental practices being unable to work under the current NHS contract, which simply does not cover the cost of treatment. We are asking dentists to deliver NHS services at a loss, which is clearly unsustainable.

Instead of seeking to provide flexibility in the dental contract, as I know some integrated care systems do across the country, Devon ICB simply reallocates that dental funding elsewhere in the budget, despite the fact that it is supposed to be ringfenced. That is causing us further issues in Devon, as the BDA informs me that dentists are leaving the NHS in droves. In Devon, we saw a 9% drop in the number of NHS dentists last year alone.

My residents welcome the Labour Government’s pledge to provide an extra 700,000 urgent dentists’ appointments and to reform the NHS dental contract, as part of a package of measures to rescue NHS dentistry. I know the Department is working at pace to roll out those extra, urgent dental appointments, and to pave the way for a new reformed dental contract.

I met the chair of the BDA recently to talk about Exeter specifically; he stressed that NHS dentists, who are stung by the many broken promises from the previous Government, need the Labour Government to deliver meaningful change, including a clear timeline for negotiations. I know the Government treat NHS dentistry extremely seriously—the Health Secretary made the BDA the first organisation he met after the election—and I was pleased to hear the Prime Minister say recently at Prime Minister’s questions that he would work as quickly as possible to end the current crisis. Given what I know and what we have heard today, for my constituents in Exeter that change cannot come soon enough.