Minister Stephen Kinnock addressing the LDC conference
Coming on the cusp of the Comprehensive Spending Review, Minister Stephen Kinnock set the right tone in his address to LDC Conference, but now we need to see real urgency and ambition, says GPDC Chair Shiv Pabary.
Speaking to delegates virtually, Mr Kinnock said: “While there is no one perfect payment system, we must build on experience, and we must address the contract in this parliament."
The UDA system was dubbed a ‘treadmill’ and ‘straitjacket’, but he stressed that he couldn’t jump the gun, ahead of the coming spending review, which he said should allow government to “put some extra welly into negotiations.”
Responding to Kinnock’s comments after the speech, Shiv said: “Now we’ve seen the deal extra welly is precisely what we need. It's clear to us, as it was clear to conference, that meaningful reform must go hand in hand with sustainable funding.”
An additional £29bn has been allocated to the NHS – and clearly dentistry needs its fair share. Our analysis shows the share of Departmental spending allocated to dentistry has more the halved under the Conservative Government, from 3.3% of the overall budget in 2010/11 to just 1.5% in 2023/24.
In keeping with the Conference’s keynote theme on resilience, delegates debated and passed motions tackling the risks facing the profession and the millions we treat. Conference also agreed for clear, full, and rapid mitigation of added costs brought by the Autumn budget. There was also concern about the risk Private Equity providers present with their growing dominance of both private and NHS care. And Conference voted to back our calls to make sugar the new tobacco. All the motions are available on the LDC website.
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