Gotcha! Leadsom Confirms £200M For Dentistry Is NOT Additional Funding
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- Published: Wednesday, 03 April 2024 11:50
- Written by Guy Tuggle
- Hits: 1236
Announcing its long anticipated Dental Recovery Plan, the Government repeatedly claimed that an additional £200M was being pumped into NHS dentistry to help it address the access crisis. Even the BBC News was seemingly taken in government spin, its February 7th report stating "To support the proposal, an extra £200m will be invested on top of the £3bn currently spent each year".
The British Dental Association saw through the ’£200M additional revenue’ claim within minutes of its announcement, describing as ’sophistry’, political efforts to try and pass it off as new funding.
But it was Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) who finally snookered government spin into a corner using a Point of Order to confront the claim by Secretary of State Victoria Atkins that there was an extra £200M.
Qureshi, speaking in the House of Commons in late March said;
"When launching the NHS Dental Recovery Plan exactly six weeks ago, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Victoria Atkins) repeatedly assured the House that the plan was backed by £200 million of new funding. She said:
“There is £200 million on top of the £3 billion that we already spend on NHS dentistry in England.”
She made that very clear, adding:
“this is additional money. I have prioritised dentistry across the board, but this is £200 million of additional money—in addition to the £3 billion that we spend in England.”—[Official Report, 7 February 2024; Vol. 745, c. 264-66.
Then, seizing on comments made by Andrea Leadsom, Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for Primary Care (including dentistry) Mrs Qureshi continued "We were all therefore very surprised to hear the Under-Secretary, explain to the Health and Social Care Committee yesterday that the plan to deal with the crisis in NHS dentistry was not in fact backed by any additional investment. She explained that it was all coming out of the £3 billion that is currently so underspent.
"As those two statements stand in direct contradiction with one another, I fear that either the Secretary of State or the Minister may have inadvertently misled the House".
Mrs Qureshi told the Deputy-Speaker (DS) that the record needs to be corrected, publicly, in Parliament.
Nigel Evans, the DS, replied that Qureshi’s comments would be ’heard’ and that if the Secretary of State or Minister felt that a correction was necessary, one would be made.
GDPUK will not be alone in monitoring parliamentary statements over the coming days.
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