Autumn Budget 2025 response
Published 26 November 2025
Autumn Budget: A step towards integrated care
Paul Schreier, Chief Executive Officer, Simplyhealth and Denplan, said:
“We welcome the Chancellor’s Autumn Budget commitment to continue prioritising the health of our nation. The investment in digital capabilities to improve productivity within healthcare, alongside the rollout of neighbourhood health centres bringing GPs, nurses, dentists, and pharmacists together, represents an important step towards delivering more accessible and integrated care.
The need for a prevention-first approach to healthcare is an important step change, as economic inactivity due to sickness is projected to exceed four million people by the end of this government, and employees are taking 9.4 days of absence per year on average. The recent Keep Britain Working Review rightly reinforces this approach and the vital role employers can play. Recommendations such as risk pooling for SMEs to improve access to health provision are pivotal to ensuring all employees have the support they need to stay in work. However, the cost of doing business continues to rise. While we welcome calls to remove disincentives, such as tax, from the system, any delay to the next spending review risks missing opportunities to embed prevention, setting us on the wrong path and adding to inactivity numbers. Resetting incentives now would boost economic contributions and help reverse the trend of rising sickness-related inactivity.
In dentistry, the funding committed to community health hubs is a positive step, as these centres can integrate dental care into local provision and improve patient access. But this progress will not be sustainable without urgent clarity on the NHS dental contract. Reform is essential to incentivise prevention and make NHS and mixed-practice dentistry viable up and down the country. Proposed changes, such as new care pathways for complex needs, mandatory urgent care provision, and fairer remuneration, must be implemented swiftly to ensure dentistry plays its full role in reducing health inequalities and supporting oral health as part of wider prevention strategies."
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