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The Minister for Care (Stephen Kinnock)
It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I thank the hon. Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller) for securing this important debate and I am delighted to wish her a happy Sussex Day. We may come from different political traditions, but she occupies Gillian Keegan’s former parliamentary seat, and I occupy Gillian’s former office in the Department of Health and Social Care, so we at least have that in common.
This is the second debate that I have responded to on dentistry in as many days—I was in the Chamber yesterday, and I am here in Westminster Hall today. That shows what a critical matter this is to our constituents, which is why this Government are taking clear action. On access to NHS dentistry, I point to 1.8 million extra treatments in the first seven months of the last financial year. In fact, taking the last full year into consideration, we are on track to deliver more than 2.5 million more dental treatments than in the year leading up to the general election.
Alison Griffiths
As this is a debate on dentistry in West Sussex, I invite the Minister to share the numbers that relate specifically to West Sussex rather than to the country.
Stephen Kinnock
I am so delighted that the hon. Lady intervened, as I was about to come to that. We have reduced the underspend—one of the many utterly shocking things I found across my portfolio when we came into office in July 2024 was a £392 million underspend on NHS dentistry. We had an absurd situation where demand for NHS dentistry was going through the roof, but because of utter incompetence, the previous Government were underspending by £392 million. We were hands-on on that. We have the ICBs commissioning; we have micromanaged this. I am delighted to say that we have got the underspend down to just £36 million in 2024-25. That is how we have managed to massively boost the number of treatments.
According to the most recent data available, the Sussex integrated care board, which serves the constituency of the hon. Member for Chichester, has delivered over 67,200 more NHS dental treatments. That is 11% more treatments between April and October last year compared with the same period before the general election. I hope that answered the question from the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Alison Griffiths).
While we have made significant progress, I do not downplay for a second the issues faced by the constituents of the hon. Member for Chichester. Whenever I reel off these statistics in a debate or on the morning media round, I can hear people saying, “Okay, you say that, but where is my dentist appointment?” I understand that there are pockets of progress and areas where we are not at all where we need to be. But it is important to be realistic: 14 years of neglect cannot be put right overnight. The result of that neglect has been people doing DIY dentistry, and the No. 1 reason why children aged five to nine are going to hospital is tooth decay. It is a shocking and Dickensian state of affairs, frankly, and the Government take it very seriously.
As I said in the main Chamber yesterday, the solution is not to bring out sticking plasters and press releases, and to tinker around the edges. The sector needs long-term reform, and the Government have laid the groundwork for a recovery that is based on solid foundations, not the sort of gimmicks that we saw under the previous Government. For example, the patient premium cost £126 million and we did not see any increase in new patients. We had to scrap that because it was a waste of time and money.
The most important thing we can do to end dental deserts is train the next generation of dentists in the relevant areas. We are taking steps to increase the supply of dentists across the country. Earlier this month, I announced the first sustained expansion of dental school places since 2007. Let that sink in for a minute. It is 20 years since we had any increase at all in dental school places, apart from a one-off increase after covid. Backed by £11 million, a total of 50 dental school places per year have been allocated equally to the University of Portsmouth and the University of East Anglia.
Alison Griffiths
In Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, and in significant parts of Chichester, we have coastal areas. In our manifesto, the Conservative party pledged golden handshakes to attract dentists to coastal constituencies, because we know that is one of the issues. Could you tell please me what specific proposals you have to attract dentists to coastal constituencies?
Stephen Kinnock
We will be publishing the data on the golden hellos in August, along with all the other data. There is a time lag from the end of the financial year to when we have collated all the data—it takes a few months—so there will be data in August on a number of issues we have discussed today. The challenge of golden hellos is that we run into problems around the contract, incentivising people to do NHS dentistry, and getting people to live and work in certain parts of the country when they might be more attracted to a big city. We are aware of the challenges for coastal areas.
On the Portsmouth announcement, I have never driven from Portsmouth to Chichester, but I understand it is about a 20-minute drive, depending on the traffic—
Stephen Kinnock
Yes, but before the hon. Lady intervenes, I will say that I am fully aware that Portsmouth is in Hampshire, so I ask her not to give me a deluge of letters from her constituents.
Jess Brown-Fuller
I promise that I will not give the Minister a lesson in geography, although what he said suggests that he may not have frequented the A27. If somebody can get to a dentist in Portsmouth in 20 minutes, they are setting off at 3 am to do so, because that is the only time it can be done in about 20 minutes.
Stephen Kinnock
We clearly need to check our GPS on that one. I understand that there are challenges, but the point is that, for the first time in decades, Chichester has a school in its vicinity that is training dentists who will be within striking distance. Who knows where all the dentists will end up living when they have done the training? But our data suggests a strong correlation and causation between where somebody goes to dental school and where they end up putting down roots and working, living and settling. That is very much our hope for the 25 places that are, for the first time in 20 years, going to the University of Portsmouth, which I was pleased to visit just a few weeks ago.
Jess Brown-Fuller
I am sure the Minister will join me in congratulating Chichester college, which is creating a programme to train up the next generation of dental assistants and nurses. Staff there are excited to be able to contribute to addressing the recruitment issues in the Chichester area.
Stephen Kinnock
I strongly echo the hon. Lady’s congratulations to Chichester college. Of course, technicians, nurses and therapists play a crucial role; dentists’ practices function not just because of the dentist but because of the whole team.
It was, frankly, a travesty that the hon. Lady’s local area did not have a dental school, and it was a problem that Governments ignored for far too long. I am delighted that we have put that right, and hope she will recognise what a game changer it is. Whereas before, people had to train elsewhere and make an active decision to move to Chichester to practice dentistry, we hope that local people can now train up in the area and stay there if they wish to. That is a real incentive for people in Chichester to choose a career in dentistry, and to stay and serve in Sussex among the people they grew up with. It will also attract young people from across the country, who may choose to continue their careers, make their homes and put down roots in the area.
Similarly, the most important thing we can do for the long-term dental health of the hon. Lady’s constituents is to make the shift from treatment to prevention. In 2024, more than one in 10 children aged five years old in Sussex ICB had experience of tooth decay, despite it being largely preventable. We are backing supervised toothbrushing through a national programme that will reach up to 600,000 children in the most deprived areas of England, backed by £21.5 million. Over £290,000 has been invested across West Sussex, East Sussex and Brighton and Hove, and over 45,000 free toothbrushes and toothpastes have been delivered through our innovative partnership with Colgate-Palmolive. We are beefing up the soft drinks industry levy to remove more sugar from children’s diets and updating standards so that there is healthier food and drink in schools.
This year, we are undertaking vital reforms in dentistry. Two months ago, we embedded urgent dental care into NHS practices, making it easier for patients to get support where they need it most. The problem we heard time and again from the sector was that dentists were not incentivised to undertake NHS work, so we brought forward a package of reforms, from which I will highlight two measures. First, dentists are set to receive higher payments for treating patients who need urgent care, taking the payment for a unit of dental activity from approximately £42 to approximately £75. Dentists now have the extra incentive to provide urgent care for issues such as severe pain, infections or dental trauma on the NHS.
Secondly, from this month, those receiving complex care, such as treatments for severe gum disease or decay in multiple teeth, will be able to schedule a single planned package of treatment and pay one patient charge for it, rather than having several courses of treatment and paying a patient charge for each. That could save people more than £200 per year—money going straight back into the pockets of working people. We are also paying dentists more fairly for this work, to incentivise them. The appointments also mean that we are easing some of the pressures on St Richard’s hospital in the hon. Lady’s constituency, because we are preventing more painful conditions from spiralling into avoidable hospital admissions.
In a nutshell, our 2026 reforms are putting patients first and supporting those with the greatest need while backing our NHS dentists, making the contract more attractive and effective, and giving them the resources to deliver more.
The Government remain committed to rebuilding NHS dentistry after years of neglect. We have made a start with reforms to the dental contract that prioritise patients with the greatest need, support better access to urgent care and deliver a better deal for dentists. Alongside that, we are taking targeted steps to support areas where access is most challenging, including through workforce incentives, new school places and reforms to the exams process for overseas-qualified dentists, which will deliver an additional 2,000 dentists per year by 2028. And we are just getting started: as I have said previously at the Dispatch Box, I remain firmly committed to delivering fundamental reform of the dental contract before the end of this Parliament.
However, meaningful reform requires careful consideration. The challenges facing NHS dentistry are complex, and there is no single universally agreed solution or perfect payment model. That is why it is important that we take the time necessary to develop reforms that are effective and sustainable, and that work for patients and the profession. I will continue to engage closely with dentists, representative bodies and patients to ensure that the reforms we bring forward address long-standing concerns and support the long-term future of NHS dentistry.