Leadsom: Dental Recovery Plan Will Be Published "Very Shortly"
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- Published: Wednesday, 10 January 2024 16:17
- Written by Guy Tuggle
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On Tuesday, Labour’s Wes Streeting held the Government to account for its’ role in the rundown of NHS Dentistry contracting. GDPUK’s Guy Tuggle listened in...
The British Dental Association demanded ’Deeds, Not Words’ as MPs gathered in the House of Commons on Tuesday (9th January) to debate an Opposition motion on rescuing NHS Dentistry.
There were certainly plenty of ’words’ from the few MPs who bothered to attend. The number sitting on the government benches ebbed and flowed from around five or six to give or take twenty as MPs came and went. 349 Conservative MPs would have been aware of the debate taking place, many had doubtless been urged to do so by dentists responding to the BDA’s call. Sadly, 299 managed to vote the motion down.
The debate opened with an admittedly polished performance by Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting. This was followed by a predictable litany of stories from backbench MPs, all basically saying the same thing or reading from excellent briefing notes issued to MPs in advance of the debate by the increasingly vocal Nuffield Trust.
For three and a half hours the chamber heard the usual stories, claims and counter-claims.
One in ten people have attempted DIY dentistry, patients thrown off lists without being notified, practices closed to new patients, to children, constituents pulling their own teeth with pliers, constituents having to make sixty mile round trips, dental extractions driving thousands of children to hospital and A&E departments seeing people at quadruple the cost to the taxpayer of a dental practice doing so. And so it went on. And on.
"A service that once was there for all of us when we needed it is now almost gone for good" fulminated Streeting.
Party political point scoring was never far away. When Conservative MP for Totnes Anthony Magnall attempted to blame Labour for the 2006 Dental Contract, the Shadow Health Secretary boxed him straight back into his seat with accusations of ’scraping the barrel’.
"How has the hon. Gentleman got the brass neck to stand up, after 14 years of his party in government, and say that a contract agreed in 2006 is the problem? If only the Conservatives had been in government for 14 years to sort it out".
Any reader using the inspired NHS Dentistry ’Bingo Card’ of claims and excuses wouldn’t wait long to call ’housey-housey’.
Time and again Mr Streeting and his Labour colleagues defaulted to the Party’s script to deliver ’700,000 urgent appointments’, ’supervised tooth brushing of 3 - 5 year olds’, ’boost training’ and ’recruit overseas workers’ to bolster the workforce in the short and medium turn. All costed, to be funded by taxing the income of ’non-doms’. And much of it no doubt likely to be in the soon-to-be-published ’Dental Recovery Plan’.
Who was going to deliver an additional 700,000 urgent NHS appointments? How would clinicians be paid? Mr Streeting did not, would not say, even when pressured by Health Secretary Victoria Atkins.
To groans of derision from the opposition benches, Mrs Atkins, in her reply to Mr Streeting, sought to lay most of the blame for the crisis on the Covid pandemic and claimed that the government had ’invested’ £1.7BN into the service to keep it alive even though it was unable to see patients during lockdowns.
The Dental Recovery Plan was announced in April 2023. When would it be published? MP’s demanded. With a smile on her face, Atkins teased the Commons saying " ’Shortly’ is a little shorter than in ’due course’ and a little longer than ’imminently’ ".
It is in the nature of our adversarial parliament for MPs to make party political points or vacuous speeches in the hope that they will get their name in their local papers and be seen to be responding to constituent’s concerns. But many MPs did display a good understanding of the factors that underpin the NHS dental crisis and several cited the about turn on ring fenced dental budgets in the West Midlands and elsewhere as being the latest twist in the dental crisis.
Recovery was "well underway" Mrs Atkins declared. The pandemic had lost seven million appointments but in 2022 the government had taken "far reaching reforms" (!) to improve the contract to ensure dentists were fairly rewarded for undertaking lengthier courses of treatment.
’Faster, Simpler , Fairer’ was Mrs Atkins’ motto for the NHS, including dentistry.
So What Next?
Conservative MP Steve Brine chaired the Health & Social Care Committee Inquiry into NHS dentistry and described its report as an ’instruction manual’ based on evidence. A new contract that moves away from UDAs towards capitation weighted on patient need is the way forward. Dentists would be paid extra for seeing new and high needs patients.
Anthony Magnall MP (Totnes, CON) said NHS dentistry should be about three things: prevention, education and pain relief. The focus in the short term should be on how we tackle pain relief with the use of dental access centres and mobile units being part of the mix and funded by redirection of budgetary underspends.
Several MPs suggested redefining the NHS dental ’offer’ and urged the creation of ’stabilisation dentistry’ accessible to all. A significant number of the public do not want to engage with dental services on a regular basis, but they want access to dentists when in pain.
Dame Andrea Leadsom, the government minister responsible for dentistry, wound up the debate. She told MPs that she was working "flat-out" on the Dental Recovery Plan (check bingo card). "Recovering and reforming NHS dentistry is a top priority for the Government" the Minister declared .
Additional money alone will not be the ’silver-bullet’ some think it will be, and Mrs Leadsom implied that reform will entail greater use of hygienists and therapists, overseas recruitment and tie-ins for newly qualified dentists.
She also mentioned making use of mobile units. And in a statement that will astonish many for its chutzpah she said "We have made good progress on dentistry, particularly through the 2022 reforms, and can be proud of the improvements achieved to date".
Q: When? A: "Very Shortly"
Andrea Leadsom concluded her statement by signalling that the Dental Recovery Plan could hit the ground faster than the secretary of State Victoria Atkins had earlier indicated.
"Having been on the receiving end of “in due course” for many years myself, colleagues will realise that I am chomping at the bit to reveal more about our dentistry recovery plan. I need to ask them all to be patient just a little while longer, but I will change the line about when to expect it from “shortly” to “very shortly”.
Crouch Not Convinced
Once again, the dental profession and millions of patients are being assuaged. "When we needed clarity, the Government provided a full gamut of platitudes and half-truths" said BDA Chair Eddie Crouch. "Ministers keep saying they want an NHS dentist for everyone. There is still no evidence of any plan to make that happen".
Mr Crouch is due to meet with Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting today (Wednesday 10th January). His feedback will be eagerly awaited.
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