Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether her Department provides ringfenced funding for dentistry to the Devon integrated care board.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
We are currently considering arrangements for 2024/25. NHS England provided guidance for the integrated care boards (ICBs) that required dental allocations to be ringfenced in 2023/24, with any unused resources to be re-directed to improve National Health Service dental access in the first instance, rather than being spent on other services. In November 2023, NHS England confirmed that where ICBs had not spent all of their allocation on improving access to dentistry, they would be able to retain any underspend, and use it to balance their bottom line and any other pressures. ICBs will decide how to use any forecast underspend in line with this guidance.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of fluoridating the water supply in Devon.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
No specific assessment has been made. The United Kingdom Chief Medical Officers in their joint statement in September 2021 concluded that on balance, there is strong scientific evidence that water fluoridation is an effective public health intervention for reducing the prevalence of tooth decay and improving dental health equality across the UK.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to ensure equal experiences of patients with (a) Chron's disease and (b) Ulcerative Colitis in the South West.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) national specialty report on gastroenterology was published in September 2021. Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis is one of the conditions covered under gastroenterological services in the report. The report sets out actions and recommendations to improve patient care in gastroenterology. The aim is to reduce unwarranted variation in treatments and services in, which will ensure consistent care is provided to IBD patients across the country.
The GIRFT programme is now embedded within NHS England programmes to improve quality and productivity, so that best practice is adopted throughout the National Health Service. RightCare scenarios support local systems to identify where patient outcomes, quality of life and service costs can be improved as the result of shifting the care pathway from a suboptimal journey to an optimal one that consistently delivers timely, evidence-based excellence of care. Once published, a new IBD RightCare scenario will set out high-quality joined-up care at every point of the patient journey.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle the NHS dentistry backlog in North Devon constituency.
Answered by Andrea Leadsom - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In the South-West, NHS England have commissioned additional urgent dental care appointments that people can access via NHS 111.
They have also implemented a new pathway called stabilisation dental care to support those who do not have access to a regular dentist but require non-urgent dental care.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department will take to ensure equal access to paediatric interventional radiology services in the UK.
Answered by Helen Whately - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Department will discuss this with NHS England.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help increase the number of dental professionals who have qualified outside the EEA who practice in the UK.
Answered by James Morris
The Government is currently amending the General Dental Council’s (GDC) international registration legislation. This aims to provide greater flexibility for the GDC to improve its existing international registration process and introduce alternative routes to registration for international applicants, whilst maintaining its focus on robust public protection. We aim to introduce these amendments in autumn 2022, subject to Parliamentary approval.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what data his Department holds on the number of people waiting to access NHS Dental services in North Devon; and what steps are being taken to utilise dental therapists within the dental industry to alleviate waiting lists.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
Data on waiting times for National Health Service dental appointments is not collected centrally. Appointments for NHS treatments, recruitment and resource planning are managed directly by dental practices.
NHS England and NHS Improvement and Health Education England (HEE) are developing proposals to reform the NHS dental contract. HEE is focusing on improving recruitment and retention and identify barriers to more efficient use of the whole dental team in NHS dentistry.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the Government announcement on investment into neurodegenerative disease research of 14 November 2021, what (a) allocation of funding is available for research into cures for Parkinson's Disease and (b) the allocation process is to determine the distribution of funds.
Answered by Maria Caulfield - Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
The £375 million investment will fund research projects into a range of neurodegenerative diseases, including Parkinson’s disease, through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). The NIHR and UKRI rely on researchers submitting high-quality applications to access funding, therefore details of allocations are not currently available. All applications are subject to peer review and judged in open competition, with awards being made on the basis of the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services, value for money and scientific quality.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment the National Institute for Health Research has made of the merits of funding projects to establish the potential effect of microplastics on human health.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The National Institute for Health Research is funding research on microplastic toxicity in humans through the Health Protection Research Unit in Environmental Exposure, which is led by Imperial College London and Public Health England. This work will be reported in peer reviewed academic journals in due course.
Asked by: Selaine Saxby (Conservative - North Devon)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the effect of the disruption to routine dentistry as a result of the covid-19 outbreak on the early detection of oral cancers.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
No such assessment has been made. Dentists play an ad hoc role in detecting oral cancers as a by-product of dental check-ups. However, oral cancer is primarily detected through the medical system. Patients with concerns about changes in their mouth should seek advice from their general practitioner and not wait for their next dental appointment.