Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what additional (a) funding and (b) other resources his Department plans to provide to primary care providers to support preventative healthcare in South Derbyshire constituency.
The 10-Year Health Plan will describe a shared vision for the health and care system in 2035, drawing directly from the extensive engagement underway with the public, patients, and staff. It will set out how the National Health Service will deliver the shift from sickness to prevention, which will be one of the central tenets of the plan. This includes a working group focused on the preventative healthcare model for the future.
We have announced a proposed £889 million uplift for general practices (GPs) in 2025/26 and set out the proposed areas of reform which will help us to deliver on our commitments. This is the largest uplift to GP funding since the beginning of the five-year framework and means that we are reversing the recent trend, with a rising share of total NHS resources going to GPs.
To shift care from sickness to prevention, the Government has also proposed providing financial incentives to reward GPs who go above and beyond to prevent the most common killers, like heart disease, for the next contract year. This is subject to the contract consultation currently underway with the General Practitioners Committee England.
We have already started hiring an extra 1,000 GPs into the NHS and uplifted a monthly payment to practices by 7.4%. We will also be resuming our consultation with Community Pharmacy England regarding funding arrangements.
The most common reason children aged five to nine are admitted to hospital is for tooth decay. We will work with local authorities and the NHS to introduce supervised tooth brushing for children aged between three and five years old in the most deprived communities. These programmes are proven to reduce tooth decay and to boost good practices at home.
Integrated care boards have delegated responsibility for planning and commissioning healthcare services to meet the reasonable needs of the people for whom they are responsible. In South Derbyshire, our Regional Director of Public Health is working with local government and the Joined Up Care Derbyshire Integrated Care System to support the shift to prevention.