Hazel Grove
Adoption pay set for debate
Local MP Lisa Smart’s call for equal pay for adoptive parents is gaining traction, with a debate in Westminster on the subject set for this week.
10 Jan 2025
NHS dentists
Over 3,000 dentists in England have stopped offering NHS care in England over the last three years, and the number of qualified dentists from the EU coming to the UK has halved, worsening the crisis.
Everyone should be able to access an NHS dentist if they need one. Instead, people across our area are faced with a stark choice between expensive private care and no care at all. This has to change.
We believe urgent reform of the NHS contract is required to ensure that the dentists that we already have deliver NHS services.
Have you had problems getting an NHS dentist?
In summer 2023, the last dentist supplying NHS services in Romiley withdrew them. Many other dentists across the whole of the constituency have already withdrawn from supplying NHS services. Let us know if you have had a problem getting an NHS dentist.
Our national plan for NHS dentists
Our policy to fix NHS dental services is to reform the NHS dental services contract and to increase funding to pay for it.
The new NHS contract should:
- Encourage and incentivise dentists to take on NHS patients,
- Meet patient need and demand rather than arbitrary targets,
- Put an end to ‘dental deserts’.
We also propose
- Increasing the number of dentist training places in the UK and continued recognition of EU trained dentists’ qualifications.
- Writing into law proper workforce planning for health and social care, including projections for dentists and dental staff.
- Launching an emergency scheme to ensure children, pregnant women and young mothers have access to their free check ups on time.
- Supervised tooth brushing training for children in early years settings, such as nurseries.
- Removing VAT on children’s toothbrushes and children’s toothpaste.
Health and social care news
Hazel Grove
Stockport MPs call Government dropping A&E wait time pledge an “insult to patients”
Liberal Democrat MPs Lisa Smart (Hazel Grove) and Tom Morrison (Cheadle) have called the dropping of the government’s pledge to meet the A&E four hour waiting time target by the end of the Parliament an “insult to patients”.
12 Dec 2024
Hazel Grove
MPs press for details of Budget spending at Stepping Hill
Stockport MPs Lisa Smart and Tom Morrison have written to Health Minister Karin Smyth to get details of whether extra repairs funding for the NHS announced in the Budget will be spent at Stepping Hill
6 Nov 2024
Hazel Grove
Government’s NHS funding must mean repairs and new hospital site for Stockport
Local Liberal Democrat MP Lisa Smart has said the extra funding for the NHS announced in the Budget must deliver the urgently needed repairs at Stepping Hill.
28 Oct 2024
Hazel Grove
Stockport MPs demand Budget action on Stepping Hill
The desperate situation at Stepping Hill Hospital must be addressed in next week’s budget, say Stockport MPs Lisa Smart and Tom Morrison.
24 Oct 2024
Hazel Grove
£56 million repair backlog for Stockport NHS
The latest NHS data has emphasized the crisis in Stepping Hill Hospital and across the NHS in the borough, with a total of £59.1million repairs required – of which £23.3 million are high risk or significant risk.
22 Oct 2024