Rosie Wrighting MP: Improving healthcare is one of my top priorities

It’s now been 100 days since the General Election and what a first 100 days it has been.

Improving local healthcare is one of my top priorities as your MP and, from setting up a new NHS mental health support helpline to beginning to recover and reform dentistry, this Labour Government has already achieved so much.

Conversations on the doorstep and correspondence I have received from constituents have made it clear that our NHS services are at breaking point. The recent Lord Darzi report on the appalling state of our health service after 14 years of Conservative mismanagement was shocking.

The fundamental promise of the NHS – that it will be there for us when we need it – has been broken. Patients have been failed by long, painful waits for treatment and ageing buildings, something I saw with my own eyes when I visited Kettering General Hospital not long after being elected. Mums who have given birth, and their newborns, have been wheeled across a car park to a temporary building because there is crumbling RAAC in the maternity ward. It’s not the hospital’s fault, nor the incredible staff who work there, but it is not an acceptable situation.

Cynical promises from the Conservatives have also done nothing but offer people false hope. They committed to rebuilding Kettering General Hospital, but as this Government found out just after the election, did not put aside anywhere near the amount of funding it needed. A review of the scheme will put its cost and timeline in a realistic position – giving local people the honesty they deserve – and I will continue to campaign for Kettering to have a hospital that is fit for the future.

We must maintain a world-class health service, available to all, and investment must go together with reform. I support the ten-year plan for the NHS, including 1,000 more GPs, and the settlement of the long-running junior doctors’ dispute which will mean better treatment for patients.

We need to talk about dentistry, too. I know how impossible it can be to find an NHS dentist – it is increasingly a lottery. Children are being admitted to hospital for the removal of rotting teeth and adults are literally pulling their own out, such is the struggle.

This Government has pledged to address the crisis with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more appointments and then reforming the dental contract by focusing on retaining NHS dentists and looking at prevention. It’s a move I fully support and one I know can help people in Kettering and its surrounding towns and villages.

There is clearly a long road ahead to fix the mess left by the Conservatives. But we will turn the NHS around to make sure the fundamental promise is back – so it is there for you when you need it.