Speeches by Kinnock.

“Yes, I think that is correct.”

“I think your question was: do the means of resolving the problem match the scale of the problem? My response is that we first have to define what we can do within the resources that we have and what the priorities are. It is going to be about choices and prioritisation—that is the nature of Government in general. We ha…”

“I think we have to define what we want to do with the NHS contract, based on the reality of the finite resource that we will have. We are of course going through the negotiations about the financial envelope. We have to work on the assumption that we will have a financial envelope that is in the region of the current f…”

“We would be happy to do that.”

“On your point on capitation, I know that the BDA’s view is that we should move to a system based on weighted capitation. We are absolutely open to having that discussion, but there are pros and cons of capitation. The prototypes for capitation were run from, I think, 2011 to 2022, which was before my time, but I am sur…”

“Yes.”

“I agree that there has been a real-terms cut in the NHS dentistry budget over recent years. I also agree that, in a sense, we had the perfect storm, because we had that overall cut but also a contract that did not work, so we have ended up with a cut and underspend, which is a truly absurd situation to be in. So I agre…”

“Yes, I would be happy to do that. I would just say that since we came in 12 months ago we have launched the 700,000, urgent appointments programme and the supervised tooth-brushing programme, and yesterday we launched this consultation which is going to have a significant impact on complex care pathways, fluoride varni…”

“I think we are moving in the right direction. We are clear that we have to have a contract that ensures that everybody who has an urgent need for dental care gets it, that dentists are incentivised and motivated to do NHS work, and that every single penny allocated for NHS dentistry is spent on NHS dentistry. We are qu…”

“My assessment is that we are on a burning platform. We have a moral imperative to fix NHS dentistry in our country. How can it be that we live in a country where the biggest cause of five to nine-year-old children being taken to hospital is to have their decaying teeth removed, when tooth decay is an almost entirely pr…”

“I am sure that officials will want to come in on this, but we are in a constant dialogue with the BDA. I don’t think it is a question of there being a lot of work that we are going to do internally before we start to engage with them. We want to do that as an iterative process, working with the BDA. But we do have to l…”

“I can certainly answer your question in terms of the first steps, because they are more within our control, in the sense that we have got to finalise the financial envelope for dentistry, and that will happen by the end of the summer at the latest. As soon as we have that, we are in a position to draw on some of the an…”

“I am also very happy to respond in writing once the Committee has had a chance to digest it. Please do send in your questions.”

“Thank you, Chair. It is a very fair point. The timing was not mainly in my control. I had been hoping that it would go out on Monday, but then for various reasons it went out yesterday instead. I am also very happy to set out a little bit of what is in there.”

“I think it is really important to say that we are going to do fundamental contract reform in parallel to a number of the other things that we are doing—such as supervised tooth-brushing. Also the consultation that we launched yesterday, which will be around those really important, and I think high-impact, interim refor…”

“We will absolutely be evaluating the programme based on a whole range of indicators, including feedback from teachers and educators, in settings, from parents, and from the evidence of also, for example, things like a reduction in the number of days lost due to tooth decay. Children losing time in school because of too…”

“Our target is to get the 600,000 reached over the course of the school year starting in September. The monitoring process is that the public health authority in each ICB area will be reporting into the ICB, and the ICB will then be reporting in to us. It is similar to what Amanda just set out on the 700,000—there will …”

“Yes. We have used the index of multiple deprivation, the 20% top percentile in terms of the super-outputs of that. We then have agreed the numbers for each ICB and each public health authority, and they have identified the schools where it will start. So yes, we have not micromanaged that from the centre. We have said,…”

“Yes. That is going to launch across the country at the beginning of the school year. We have got now the 23 million toothpastes and toothbrushes that we have secured through that innovative partnership with Colgate-Palmolive. They are being delivered across the country over the course of the summer, and the programme w…”

“I will hand over to colleagues, because they are going to be very closely involved with that, but I am getting a monthly update from officials, and they are updating me on the performance of each of the ICBs. There will be a check and challenge process so that where we see that there may be challenges around hitting th…”