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.
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 Many other dentists across the whole of the constituency have already withdrawn from supplying NHS services.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 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:
We also propose
The desperate situation at Stepping Hill Hospital must be addressed in next week’s budget, say Stockport MPs Lisa Smart and Tom Morrison.
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.
The danger of Stockport becoming an NHS “dental desert” has been laid bare by House of Commons Library research showing over 23,000 children across the borough didn’t see an NHS dentist last year.
Lisa Smart MP took the opportunity to raise uncertainty around funding for Stepping Hill at the Chancellor’s question time in Parliament yesterday
MPs Tom Morrison and Lisa Smart have written to Health Secretary Wes Streeting to ensure that a promise for urgent funding for Stepping Hill is not derailed by the Government’s funding black hole.
The desperate state of Stepping Hill Hospital – with new videos emerging earlier this week of flooded corridors – was the top priority raised on behalf of the constituency in new MP Lisa Smart’s maiden speech to Parliament yesterday [25/07/2024].