Dental Services: East of England

Debate between Richard Bacon and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 16th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mr Richard Bacon]

I enjoyed listening to the remarks of every contributor, including my parliamentary neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous). I was going to say “the Member for Aldous”—going around my constituency, one finds quite a lot of Aldouses; I have not yet established whether they are all related, but if one scrapes under a stone in East Anglia one quickly comes across an Aldous. He gave us a tour d’horizon—a tremendous summary of the expertise that he has gathered over the last few years. Together with the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), he has led the way in drawing the issue to the attention of other hon. Members. I pay tribute to him for that, and I am deeply in his debt, because reading his speeches was a great way to read my way into the subject—one that I was drawn to not because of any expertise, but because of my constituency postbag. We have heard that the same is true for all hon. Members.

Opinion pollsters are sometimes behind the curve on what is a salient issue, but hon. Members on both sides of the House know that this is the top issue facing us. My plea to the Minister is not to go so fast that he gets it wrong, but to bide his time and ensure that he has taken everything into account. He should talk to his Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay)—an east of England MP who has the same problems in his constituency postbag—and come up with an answer that is attractive and provides lasting change. That is what we want to see.

My hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), another of my parliamentary neighbours, raised the interesting point of how we encourage people who have had money spent on them by the NHS to stay in the NHS, even if they are paying fees themselves, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said. I would be open to a wide variety of methods for doing that, including forgiveness of part of or perhaps all student loans. We need to make radical changes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) quoted a startling statistic: £80 per head is spent on dentistry in the areas that have the best dental care, and only £39 in parts of the east of England. What annoys me more than anything else is that, outside London and the south-east, the east of England is the fastest growing area of the country. It contributes the most gross value added to the economy outside London and the south-east. That is an argument that MPs in Norfolk and elsewhere in the east of England have been making for many years. We have been saying for years, “Give us the infrastructure, give us the broadband, give us the rail connectivity and give us the mobile telephony that actually works, without the need to go 100 yards down the road, stand on one leg and hope there is an “r” in the month to get a mobile telephone signal. Then we will provide the economic growth.”

Going back to the Prime Minister’s points, I seem to remember that one of them is about economic growth. Here we are contributing so much to the economy and yet not getting our fair share back, when the opportunity in the east of England is unrivalled in the UK. A golden triangle could exist between the economic heat, innovation and intellectual firepower of Cambridge; the Norwich Research Park in my constituency, where scientists look at world-leading advances in genomics and plant science; and technology in Ipswich at the BT labs at Martlesham. That golden triangle represents an extraordinary opportunity for the whole United Kingdom.

I was recently at the Cambridgeshire Development Forum, where I heard people talking about east-west rail and comparing themselves with Boston and Silicon Valley, but saying that they do not have enough room to grow. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) that that is, of course, Boston in America. The obvious answer is, “You have got loads of room to grow. You have got the whole of the east of England.” To an investor from Dubai or Shanghai, it all looks like Cambridge. We have a huge opportunity, but we need not only the infrastructure but the world’s best medical and dental services.

[Andrew Selous]

In an uncharacteristic slip and momentary lapse of memory, my hon. Friend forgot to mention the world-leading research in Cranfield, which I am sure he was going to add to his golden triangle of opportunities in the east of England. I am sure that that slipped his mind accidentally.

[Mr Richard Bacon]

It might make it more of a pentagram, but I did mean to mention Cranfield, of course. My hon. Friend knows that in South Norfolk we speak of little else. I do not want to take up too much time, although we are slightly ahead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness said that he is not technically in the east of England. I had a mad great-great aunt who lived in Brigg in Lincolnshire, and Lincolnshire has always been in the east of England, as far as I am concerned. He is very welcome at this debate, and I had a great interest in what he said. However, if it is true that the wilder fringes of the internet have got worse in recent years, and if my hon. Friend was responsible for 5G, to whom should we attribute the extra growth in the wilder fringes of the internet, if not to him? I only pose the question.

The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) surprised me. I remember when he was shadow Secretary of State for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government portfolio. He mostly appeared at the Dispatch Box like an angry avenging angel. The fact that he is capable of sounding rather rational and sensible was a surprise to me. I am afraid he also confirmed my worst fears—