Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 5th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

The idea of a social care cost cap has dropped off the agenda slightly. I know it is incredibly expensive, but I continue to be contacted by constituents who face losing everything. When often their loved ones have dementia and it is already emotionally an incredibly traumatic time, they have the added anxiety of how they are going to pay for care. The only thing that should matter is what works and is best for their loved one, but there is a cloud of anxiety hanging over society, which we all worry about. Will the Minister confirm that this issue has not lost her attention and that we will continue to consider whether we can introduce a cap?

[Helen Whately]

I thank my hon. Friend for his important question on concerns about the cost of care and how much it costs some people. As he may know—I remind him—the charging reforms were delayed in 2022 by the Chancellor after we listened to local authorities.

NHS Dentistry: Recovery and Reform

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I well understand why my hon. Friend has asked that question, about a matter that other Members have also raised. We are exploring ways in which we can make the expenditure of the dentistry budget more transparent, because it is right for ICBs to reflect the needs of local residents and deliver the services that should be available under this dental recovery plan.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I very much welcome these interventions, particularly as I raised a question just a few weeks ago in Prime Minister’s questions about the time period. I am particularly pleased about that. On international dentists, I completely agree with what many colleagues have said. I have a close friend whose husband is Mexican and fully qualified as a dentist. The period between him getting the right to be in the UK and becoming a dentist in the UK is two or three years—it is far too long and there is far too much bureaucracy. I appreciate the announcement on therapists. We have 24 new ones on the new course in Suffolk, but 400 applied so I think there is room for even more therapists to play a key role. Can we also make sure that the consultation period is rapid? This is a common-sense policy and I think we should just get on with it. Finally, will the Secretary of State visit Ipswich to see the new dental centre and hear the case we are making for a dental school? We are the obvious place in the east of England, now that we have a dental centre.

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend will appreciate that I get a lot of invitations, but I will do everything I can to meet him. His passion and ambition for his local area shine through, and not just in the question he asks today but in the question he asked the Prime Minister a few weeks ago. He is absolutely right: we need the General Dental Council to work with us—I think it will—to ensure that we can get more international dentists registered as quickly as possible, for the benefit of our constituents.

Urgent and Emergency Care Recovery Plan

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Lady raises a fair and important point about what is in the wider package, alongside the mental health ambulances, which I think are a positive step. Last week, I met Baroness Buscombe as part of the pre-legislative scrutiny of the proposed mental health legislation, which will pick up some of the points that the hon. Lady raises. Examples of innovation include empowering people before they have a mental health crisis to use one of the apps that have been developed to set out their statement of wishes and other information, which is very helpful for paramedic crews when they have a mental health crisis. We are looking at how we use innovation to better give voice to the patient, and often to do that before they have the mental health incident, rather than when the ambulance arrives.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I welcome the announcement today; I think the key thing is that it makes a difference in the short term. The Secretary of State will be aware of plans to build a new A&E department at Ipswich Hospital. The plan is for it to open in January 2024. What assessment has been made of the difference that that could make in the medium to long term by increasing capacity and improving waiting times? Will he also be prepared to work with me and the hospital’s trust to potentially expedite the plan, so that it might even happen slightly before January 2024?

[Steve Barclay]

In a former role, when I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury, I signed off a significant expansion of A&E facilities. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend of my commitment to putting more capacity into emergency departments, not least because they need a certain level of capacity to be able to ensure same-day access, triage and ways of getting flow into the system. As for the wider site proposal, clearly the ICB for his area will want to prioritise that.

Dental Training College: East Anglia

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

As I was saying, it would be all too easy to focus any speech on dentistry on a call for the renegotiation of the NHS dental contract. Every Member of Parliament will know from their postbag the suffering that ordinary people are experiencing every day because they are simply unable to see a dentist.

The pandemic has caused the loss of 40 million dental appointments—more than an entire year’s worth of standard pre-covid treatment—but covid is not the cause of our problems. Ever since Labour imposed its NHS dental contract on the profession back in 2006, trouble has been brewing. Dentists have been voting with their feet, moving in their thousands away from NHS treatment into private work.

That trend has only accelerated through covid. Between the start of the pandemic and May 2022, 3,000 dentists have stopped doing any NHS work. Three quarters of those who are left say that they are likely to reduce their coverage further over the next year, so we simply cannot ignore the problem any longer. The pain and suffering are too great. Labour may have created this bad system, which fails to pay for the cost of complex work, but our job is to fix it, and the sooner the better.

The purpose of this debate, however, is not to moan about the state of NHS dental provision, but to put forward a positive case for solving the long-term problems in Norfolk and the east. Put simply, we have a desperate shortage of dentists of any description. Too few dentists and too few dental technicians—whether NHS or private—are choosing to work in East Anglia.

Nationally, the General Dental Council says that we have more dentists than ever before, with a national average of 43 for every 100,000 of the population, but in Norfolk and Waveney, that figure is just 38. That is the fifth lowest ratio of the 106 clinical commissioning groups around the country. Dental practices are crying out for new staff, but they simply cannot get them.

In the town of Fakenham in my constituency, I lobbied successfully for the NHS to award a brand-new NHS dental contract to increase local NHS provision. That was the Government being prepared to pour new money into increasing NHS provision. However, when that contract was advertised, not a single company bid for the work. There simply was not the staff to supply the need.

That is not just an NHS issue. In the same town, a private dental practice has been advertising for a private dentist for two years, but without success. In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Duncan Baker), there is a dentist in Sheringham who operates practices both in London and Norfolk. He has not had a newly qualified dentist come to work in his Sheringham practice for 10 years. Job vacancies in London are snapped up, but he simply cannot get them to take the jobs in Norfolk.

Why can we not produce dentists in East Anglia? The answer is that there is nowhere for them to train. If someone who lives in East Anglia wants to become a dentist, the nearest place they can train is Birmingham or London. None of the 10 training facilities around England is in the east of England.

That has to change. We know from our experience with the University of East Anglia that graduates tend to stay and build their lives close to where they have studied. Each year, the UEA does a survey of its graduates to see where they go to accept their first employment. If we look at that survey for doctors coming through the medical school of the University of East Anglia, we see that more than 40% end up taking jobs locally every year. That is great for us in relation to doctors and particularly for the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, which is based in Norwich. Unfortunately, however, the same problem is true in dentistry.

Let us look at the number of dentists working near existing dental training schools. As I said, Norfolk has 38 dentists per 100,000 of the population. Devon is a broadly similar county—it is largely rural, with coastal communities and one major conurbation, Plymouth—but there is a big difference: Plymouth has a dental school, which was installed in 2005, and Devon’s ratio of dentists per 100,000 of the population is not 38, but 49.6. If we look at the north-east, where there is a school in Newcastle, we see that its ratio of dentists to the general public is 56 per 100,000 of the population. In Cheshire and Merseyside, there is a school in Liverpool, so the whole area benefits from 58 dentists per 100,000 of the population. We can see from the hard data that people tend to settle down where they have trained.

So if that is the data, surely the solution to East Anglia’s problems is obvious: first, we need to open a dental school in East Anglia. I raised that need directly with the University of East Anglia some months ago and I have been enormously encouraged and impressed by their response, strongly supported by the NNUH, the region’s training hospital. The University of East Anglia has developed an innovative solution to our dental training problems that would minimise cost and get students out into the workplace from the start of their training, helping with capacity in the short term and dealing with the training deficit in the long run.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

As a Suffolk MP, I welcome the idea of an East Anglian training centre. I also want the University of Suffolk to play a role. It recently outlined its plans for a Suffolk centre for dental development. Does my hon. Friend agree that, actually, a dental training college in Norwich could work hand in glove with the new centre in Ipswich to make sure that people are trained locally but, when needed, they are pooled to provide services on the NHS for our constituents?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree entirely. There can be collaboration between the university in Norwich and the University of Suffolk, which is based in Ipswich. People can start training in Norwich and, once they are qualified, have career and professional development taken care of by the proposed unit in Ipswich. I will come on to that in further detail.

To return to the plans of the University of East Anglia, its idea is that students would work in the community for at least one day a week throughout their five-year training course. In that way, dental students will increase the capacity of associated NHS practices right from the get-go. Too often, it is suggested that a dental training school is too long term to solve the problems now. In a sense, it is, of course, but under this plan, we would have increased capacity right from the first year of the students’ five-year course.

There are more benefits, too: students would not only increase the capacity, but develop employment relationships locally, increasing their stickiness, and provide training income to stretched NHS practices. For that reason, MPs from North Norfolk, North West Norfolk, Mid Norfolk, South Norfolk and Norwich North all support the proposal. If there were an East Norfolk constituency, I am sure that that Member would support it as well.

Draft Mental Health Bill

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The NHS is already preparing for this change. Of course, this is not law yet and we can make progress before it becomes law, but I believe that once it does become law, subject to the will of this House, it will galvanise more parts of the NHS to make sure that that commitment is met at all times.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Bill’s focus on autism and special educational needs. Having a learning disability often means that your brain is wired a bit differently, and often you feel like you are not understood, and that can contribute to mental ill health. On Norfolk and Suffolk mental health trust, we have been languishing for seven years and that has led to hundreds of people losing their lives. Will the Secretary of State assure me that this Bill will be part of ensuring that never again will we let failure last so long and the cost be so high?

[Sajid Javid]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Sadly, we have instances around the country where certain trusts have failed local people when it comes to mental health. He mentions Norfolk and Suffolk. We need to do better. This Bill and the resources behind it will make the difference.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise this issue, and the whole House heard just before the recess the results of the independent work done by Donna Ockenden. The hon. Lady is right to talk about that and the pressure that has been faced locally. I understand that she has already reached out to my hon. Friend the Minister for Health and that he will be meeting her to discuss just that.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

3. What steps his Department is taking to tackle the backlog in NHS dentistry appointments.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

The dental activity threshold has recently been raised to 95% of usual activity. That is another quarter-on-quarter increase to get us towards 100% of pre-pandemic activity. I fully recognise, though, that access to NHS dentistry before the pandemic was patchy and that the crux of the problem is the current NHS dental contract, so work is under way to reform that contract. As negotiations have started, I am limited in what further I can say, but I will update the House as soon as possible.

[Tom Hunt]

A number of my constituents are finding it impossible to access NHS dental care. They include Alison, one of my constituents who worked as a midwife in Ipswich Hospital for 40 years. Some of them have contacted 40 different practices and have not got anywhere. My understanding is that there has been a 30% drop in the number of dentists taking on NHS work in Suffolk. Will the Minister explain what local work is going on between the Department and the local NHS bodies to try to ensure that this issue is addressed?

[Maria Caulfield]

My hon. Friend is quite right in his question and is campaigning hard to increase dental activity in his constituency. One of the key pieces of work is being done through Health Education England, which set out a range of recommendations in its “Advancing Dental Care” review. That will do a number of things, such as increase the skill mix and scope of practitioners across dental teams, and we may well require legislation to bring some of that work forward. Health Education England is also introducing more flexible routes into dental training and doing some workforce modelling to identify the parts of the country with the biggest gaps in provision, so that we can establish centres of dental development in those areas. I will look at Ipswich in particular.

Children’s Mental Health

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rosena Allin-Khan (Tooting) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House recognises the importance of Children’s Mental Health Week; is concerned about the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the mental health of young people and that there has been a 77% rise in the number of children needing treatment for severe mental health issues since 2019; calls on the Government to guarantee mental health treatment within a month for all who need it and to provide specialist mental health support in every school, including a full-time mental health professional in every secondary school and a part-time professional in every primary school; and further calls for the Government to establish open access mental health hubs for children and young people in every community to ensure the best start to life for future generations.

This is Children’s Mental Health Week. I congratulate the children’s mental health charity Place2Be, which launched the first ever Children’s Mental Health Week in 2015. I also congratulate all the mental health charities and schools that are taking part in events this week.

The whole House will want to recognise the hard work and dedication of mental health professionals, campaigners, advocates, teachers, parents and guardians, especially over the past two years. So many mental health professionals have themselves suffered mental ill health, exhaustion and burnout. As we reach out to all the children and young people affected by poor mental health, we want them to know that we in this House are with them.

The pandemic has placed a huge weight on the shoulders of our children and young people. With schools closed, financial uncertainty at home, the exams fiasco and anxiety about the future, the pandemic has hit the poorest and most vulnerable children hardest. This highlights the inequalities in our society.

Children with chaotic home lives, children in overcrowded and noisy housing and children from black and ethnic minority communities suffer disproportionately from worse outcomes and worse mental health provision than white communities. Black children are much more likely to experience a mental health problem but far less likely to receive any support.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I am interested in that comment because, of course, the Education Committee recently found that white kids from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have the worst educational outcomes. I would take issue with the hon. Lady’s point.

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Perhaps he would like to understand that some white groups from poor socioeconomic backgrounds have such outcomes but, by far and away, it is disproportionately weighted against black and minority ethnic groups as a whole in this country.

There was a crisis in child and adolescent mental health provision in this country even before the pandemic made it worse. The latest report by the Children’s Commissioner shows that demand for child and adolescent mental health services—CAMHS—increased in 2020-21, with one in six children likely to be suffering from a mental health condition, up from one in nine in 2017.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. There has to be retention, and I will come on to focus on our plan to grow the workforce. I will make progress, because I appreciate that I have been talking for a long time, and I want as many Members as possible to be able to speak.

I would like the Minister to tell us how they will tackle mental health inequalities on the lines of place, race, class and income—not slogans, not rehashed announcements, but a real plan with real funding. I have no doubt, sadly, that they will rehash old announcements. This is all while the Department of Health and Social Care wrote off £8.7 billion on wasted PPE equipment.

[Tom Hunt]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Dr Allin-Khan]

I am afraid I have to make some progress. Labour has a plan for children’s mental health, and the next Labour Government will implement it.

The next Labour Government will guarantee mental health treatment within a month for all who need it, setting a new NHS target to ensure that patients start receiving appropriate treatment—not simply an initial assessment of needs—within a month of referral. The next Labour Government will recruit 8,500 new staff so that 1 million additional people can access treatment every year by the end of Labour’s first term in office. The next Labour Government will put an open-access mental health hub for children and every young person in the community, providing early intervention drop-in services. The next Labour Government will provide specialist mental health support in every school to support pupils and resolve problems before they escalate.

Labour’s plan will see a full-time mental health professional in every secondary school and a part-time professional in every primary school. The next Labour Government will make every week Children’s Mental Health Week, until every child has security, wellbeing and the support they need. Childhood should be a time of wonder and joy; a time to store up precious memories of friendship, holidays and play; and a time to experience the things that form us as adults, yet thousands of children are suffering from stress, anxiety or depression. We are failing them—failing on prevention, failing on access to treatment, failing on funding and failing on supporting their families—and the system is stretched to breaking point. The staff are exhausted. The children are suffering. It is all happening on the Government’s watch, and they are doing nothing about it. That is why I urge all Members across the House to support the motion.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

It is very clear that this is an incredibly difficult time for our young people’s mental health. Clearly the disruption caused to education has contributed towards their anxiety over exams, as has not being able to socialise and do the things that they love. That has all contributed towards the significant increase in our young people needing mental health support.

It is important to bear in mind things like social media. Only this morning, we were in the Education Committee talking to experts about the impact that social media is having on young people. When I grew up and finished A-levels, we had Facebook Messenger, and I had Facebook when I went to university. Let us imagine a situation where someone is being bullied at school: back in the day, at least they could escape, or kind of escape, in the evenings, but in this 24-hour social media age it can be increasingly hard to do that. Serious regulation and intervention will have to be made in this area, and we have to be open to that. We cannot be overly libertarian on the impact of social media on the mental health of our young people.

When we talk about the disruption that has happened and the stop-start nature of a lot of it, largely unavoidably, we must bear in mind that often those with special educational needs really struggle with the transitions and their anxiety levels have potentially been inflamed particularly highly by the uncertainty that has been caused. Getting special educational needs right matters for the education of those young people, their ability to achieve in school, and their ability to get a good job and get on. If we do not get special educational needs right, it can be incredibly bad for the mental health of those individuals if they feel they are in an education setting where there is not an understanding of them and their needs, and how they process information. If you have a learning disability, your brain is wired a bit differently, as I know from my own experience.

The point I am making is about the importance of getting young people diagnosed as early as possible, because it is only when we know what we are dealing with that we can begin to have an education system that speaks to all young people and caters for them. Otherwise, they may feel as though they are not being understood and the education system is not speaking to them because of their potential “disabilities”—we call them that, but I do not like to do so, because I think difference is good and being an unconventional, creative learner, given the right support, is good.

Some positive steps have been taken and the Minister who is closing this debate is making a fantastic start, so he deserves credit for that, but we still need to strive to go further. Getting special educational needs right is important for not just these people’s life chances, but their mental health. We see this when we look at the fact that about 40% of those in prison have special educational needs. If people feel as though the system is failing them, we can understand why some want to turn against that system. I often get the violins about my own experience, but I will mention it again. As somebody who at 12 had the reading and writing age of an eight-year-old, and had my eyes glazed over at the back of the classroom, I felt that anger as well. That is my point about children’s mental health: it matters for all young people, but let us think about those with SEN, because not getting it right for their education is about not just their getting on in school and getting a job, but their mental health.

Elective Care Recovery in England

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am being open and honest at the Dispatch Box about the scale of the challenge and about the challenge for us in tackling it, and the hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that. In respect of the devolved Administrations, I regularly speak to—I would like to meet in person but we regularly meet remotely—the Northern Ireland Health Minister, Robin Swann, whose work in this space I pay tribute to. We talk about a range of issues, not just waiting lists and the impact of covid, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I am always happy to have conversations with my opposite numbers in the devolved Administrations.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I appreciate the fact that 2 million people have been added to waiting lists throughout the pandemic—it is foolish to try to pretend that that has not made a big difference—and I also appreciate the Government’s £12 billion-a-year plan to help to address the situation. Needless to say, many of our constituents continue to wait in pain for elective surgery, including hip and knee replacements. The Minister will know my views about orthopaedic services in Ipswich and some of the concerns I have had about the new centre in Colchester. It could be that the increased capacity in Colchester cuts waiting times, but there is still an issue about people getting to Colchester so that surgery can take place. Will the Minister meet me to update me on how he is ensuring that Ipswich people are at the heart of all future developments when it comes to the hospitals trust?

[Edward Argar]

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend. Following his election in 2019—a fantastic result in Ipswich—he was one of the first new colleagues I was able to visit and, with him, I saw Ipswich Hospital for myself. He makes an important point: in looking at the healthcare system in Ipswich and Colchester, it is important that we ensure that the people of both Ipswich and Colchester get access to the best possible facilities, which is exactly what my hon. Friend campaigns for.

Public Health

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Norris]

We are after the fact now on that, but I think we have to protect the principle that we do not expect people to wear masks if doing so is detrimental to their health. That is the right level of proportionality, but we are reliant on good faith and people not abusing that, and I would be disappointed to hear of cases such as those my hon. Friend raised.

I particularly want to raise with Ministers a point about shop workers. Our hard-working shop workers have given us so much during the last 20 months. They have kept open the vital community assets that mean we were all able to be fed and watered. In return they have faced increasing violence and abuse. It should be made very clear that they are not being asked to police this; I hope the Minister will do that and also give more detail, as colleagues clearly wish to hear it, about how enforcement will work in practice.

The largest number of infections is now in those aged under 20, with the peak at approximately 10. This is a big part of continuing transmission, yet the changing and drifting policies on masks have created confusion across schools, colleges and universities. Can the Minister confirm what the new requirements are across all settings?

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

I am very pleased that compulsory mask wearing has not been extended to the hospitality sector, as that would have been deeply damaging to businesses. What is the position of Her Majesty’s Opposition on this issue, because I think I heard something slightly different just now from what I heard yesterday?

[Alex Norris]

It is hard to answer given that this is not on the face of these regulations, so I have asked the Minister to be clear about why that differentiation was made, and then all Members would be able to make a judgment as to whether that was a wise decision.

Covid-19 Update

Tom Hunt Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend has raised this issue of where, in a minority of cases, someone has taken a first dose but has become hesitant about the second. In all those cases, people are being individually contacted, often by their GPs or other clinicians, and offered meetings and phone calls. They are being talked to, to try to encourage them to take the second dose. It is really important that in that situation people follow up with a second dose to get the full protection they deserve.

[Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)]

We have heard a lot about variants and how they can evade the vaccine. It was not that long ago that I was reading a lot about enhancing and tweaking the existing vaccines, and potentially even a universal vaccine that was a kind of a variant-busting vaccine. What are things looking like in that regard, and what is the possible timeframe in which we can release a vaccine that can better protect us against variants?

[Sajid Javid]

I think it is reasonable to assume that at some point in the future, perhaps as early as next year, there may be what I referred to as bi-variant or perhaps even multi-variant vaccines. The flu vaccine is a multi-variant vaccine, for example. In terms of availability and getting approval from regulators, we are not there yet, but I believe that is the general direction of travel. When we do get there, I think it will be much easier to live with covid-19.