Wes Streeting

I am grateful to the hon. Member for her question and congratulate her on her re-election to the House. She is right to point to the detrimental impact that the Conservatives’ failure is having on people’s lives. In fact, in 1948, when the national health service was founded, Nye Bevan received a letter from a woman who had worked her entire life in the Lancashire cotton mills about how the dentistry she was given by the national health service had given her dignity and the freedom to associate in any company. What a tragedy that 76 years later, the Conservative party has squandered and destroyed that legacy to the point where people are suffering not just pain and agony, but the indignity of being unable to find a job and unable to socialise in polite company because they are ashamed of the state of their rotting teeth. The hon. Member is absolutely right: Lord Darzi is conducting a review on the state of the NHS, and it will report in September. That is not preventing us from making progress, talking to the BDA and working within the Department and across the sector to get those 700,000 appointments up and running as a matter of urgency. I look forward to reporting the progress to her and other right hon. and hon. Members.