Rejected Access Plan Revived
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- Published: Thursday, 26 September 2024 07:55
- Written by Peter Ingle
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Patients from Wales could receive NHS dental treatment in England, and vice-versa, under the UK and Welsh governments‘ joint plan to bring down waiting lists. That is if the proposal can survive party political point scoring.
Post devolution the Welsh government controls the NHS in Wales and UK ministers are responsible for the health service in England. The BBC has reported that Welsh Secretary Jo Stevens has said that health boards in Wales and trusts in England could work together to deliver "additional surgical procedures,” though she warned the plans were not a "panacea" for either nation.
"We can work together cross border to deliver earlier surgical operations for people on waiting lists," she said.
The Labour election manifesto included a pledge to work with the Welsh government to bring down waiting times, and led to questions for Sir Keir Starmer over whether he was overstepping a line in terms of devolution.
In a recent statement, Labour said there would be more opportunities to explore cross-border collaboration. While some cross-border arrangements already exist, the new proposals represent a more targeted approach, specifically aimed at bringing down long waiting lists in areas that need it. This will be combined with a greater focus on where there might be spare capacity.
Welsh NHS dentistry will also be used as an example for how to run the service in England. This may come as a shock to dentists on both sides of the English Welsh border given the warnings from the BDA that the service could disappear in Wales. The BDA has been critical of contract changes intended to increase the number of appointments which prioritised new patients, at the cost of reduced access for existing ones. There have been suggestions that NHS dentistry in Wales may not survive the plans to make the 112,000 appointments for new patients.
Though the number of dental practices open in Wales has risen gradually over the past three years to 1,434, it still falls short of the 1,506 that were operating in 2019.
In a further collaboration to bring down waiting lists, Wales will benefit from best practice shared by England, where there are plans to deliver 40,000 extra NHS appointments a week. These appointments were promised by the then opposition in May, at a cost of £1.1bn. This puts the Welsh Government in line for consequential funding, because of the extra cash being spent across the border.
The proposals are not new. An offer from the Conservative UK government to help with waiting lists in Wales in August 2023 was dismissed as a "naked political hit" by Wales’ current First Minister Eluned Morgan, who was health secretary at the time. However, the Conservative shadow Welsh secretary said he was pleased Labour ministers had now "seen the light".
After the election in July, when a Conservative former minister had asked if any progress had been made on the proposal, Wes Streeting had replied that "this government is not interested in gesture politics".
Now First Minister Morgan has said, “"We don’t have a monopoly on good ideas and there’s lots we can learn from our closest neighbours.”
"We are ready to harness the power of two Labour governments,” he added.
Meanwhile Plaid Cymru’s Siân Gwenllian hit out at the Welsh Secretary. “Put simply,” the MS for Arfon said, “the Welsh Secretary’s comments were disingenuous and ignored a multitude of failures in Wales’ dentistry provision. And that’s without getting in to a debate about the serious overstepping of a devolved issue in Wales.”
The Plaid MS has just published a report that called for a School of Dentistry based in her Bangor constituency to deal with NHS dental workforce shortages. “I hope the Secretary of State for Wales will join me in calling for her Labour colleagues in Cardiff to set up a School training dentists at Bangor University as soon as possible.”
Plaid Cymru’s leader Rhun ap Iorwerth also criticised the Welsh Secretary’s remarks following the termination of a further NHS dental contract on Ynys Môn. He said: “This is another blow for an island that has seen a sharp decline in the availability and accessibility of NHS dental services in recent years. The blame lies squarely at the door of the Labour Welsh Government, who failed over their 25 years in power to get to grips with the issues facing the dental sector in Wales. Instead, they’ve allowed services to diminish over time, meaning more patients are suffering.
“Yesterday, the Welsh Secretary of State said that the UK government will use Wales as a blueprint when it comes to dental services. But Jo Stevens need only see the people waiting in vain for NHS dental care to see the depths of the problems in dentistry in Wales.”
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