Speeches by Kinnock.

“Sadly, they are not. We have 36,000 registered dentists in the country, but only about 10,500 full-time equivalents are working in NHS dentistry. There is clearly a gap. The British taxpayer invested £200,000 in every single one of those 36,000, or at least the ones who were educated and trained in the UK. We believe i…”

“Thank you for the invitation to come before the Committee today. When you say the interventions, would you like me to say something more broadly, or specifically on the three-year tie-ins?”

“Assuming that we continue with the golden hello scheme, or something like that, it is very targeted on dental deserts. There is a commitment to having a scheme that targets underserved areas. Whether the current golden hello scheme, as it is set up, is workable and delivering what we want is another question. We need t…”

“Colleagues in the Department are working hard on the workforce plan. It is useful to have the 10-year plan, because it is generally a very good idea to define your strategic purpose as an organisation before you define the workforce to deliver it. It is very good that we have sequenced it on that basis. On workforce, I…”

“There is a budget for 240 golden hellos. We are currently at 93, which is not as high as I would like it to be, so we need to drill down to understand why we have not had more take-up. A large number are out for advertisement as we speak, and we hope there will be improved take-up as information and awareness of this o…”

“We absolutely recognise that routine check-ups are important, but our view, based on NICE guidance, is that unnecessary routine check-ups are taking place, so one thing is to shift into effective prevention rather than ineffective prevention. We are also doing a lot of prevention work through supervised tooth-brushing …”

“It is on the record now, Josh.”

“I think the difference, Alex, is that there is good prevention that is effective and there is prevention that is not really adding any value. What we are trying to get to is based on the NICE guidance of 12 to 24 months, or six to 12 months for children. Let’s do that, because that is clinically demonstrated to be effe…”

“The consultation on the survey closed on 16 June, and we are now going through those statistics. I am very keen to get a conclusion as rapidly as possible, because if we can put that information together with the financial envelope, we can go into contract reform with all the basic information we need—both your costs a…”

“I think it is a really interesting proposal and we should definitely look at it. NICE guidance on routine check-ups is that an adult with good oral health doesn’t need a check-up more than between every 12 and 24 months, and a child with good oral health doesn’t need a check-up more than between six and 12 months. We d…”

“It is a very important point.”

“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…”

“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.”

“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…”