Children’s Oral Health

Debate between Catherine West and Andrew Selous

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.

As several speakers have said, this issue really matters, and it matters throughout people’s lives. A poor set of teeth can affect confidence, which can affect life chances significantly. It is shocking that the most common cause of hospital admission among five to nine-year-olds is tooth decay. According to a recent parliamentary answer, in 2015-16 some 917,346 tooth extractions were performed on children.

I note that in a recent publication the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health called for a child’s first dental check-up to be recorded in their personal child health record—that is supposed to happen by the age of one—and for paediatricians to include oral health in the assessment of all-round children’s health. If the first check-up happens by the time the child is one, we can set good habits in place and parents will carry on, knowing that dentistry is free for children.

On fluoridation of the water, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) talked about, I will quote from a Public Health England document published on 14 June 2017. It says:

“An authority considering fluoridation will be met with claims that it does not work and that it causes harm. Both statements are untrue. PHE’s Water fluoridation: health monitoring report for England 2014 concluded that fluoridation is an effective community-wide public health intervention.”

We must be guided by the science in this issue. Many years ago, when I stood for election in Sunderland North, my Labour opponent came out with totally unscientific and untrue statements. We must be guided by the evidence, and I am pleased with what the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend said. The evidence seems to be clear that fluoridation is effective. Given the scale of the problem, we should do something about it.

Schools should be sugar-free zones as much as possible. I back banning the advertising of sugar products before 9 pm and would like to see an accelerated product reformulation programme. It is concerning that the reformulation data from August this year will not be made available until March next year. That is an area the Select Committee on Health is taking a close interest in.

As a nation, we have to wake up to the importance of child oral health and not be leisurely about it. It is a public health emergency and there is a degree of urgency to the issue that I want to see reflected in the Department of Health. We could ensure that all sports, education and health settings refused to put sugary drinks in vending machines.

[Catherine West]

The hon. Gentleman is making some excellent points. Does he agree with me that the amount of sugary drinks and products for sale in leisure centres and hospitals seems to send a mixed message?

[Andrew Selous]

I agree with that. Some of the food companies set a lot of store by their links with sport. Of course sport is a good thing—we should all take more exercise—but the key is good oral preventive hygiene and consuming less sugar. When we consider that five-year-olds are consuming their own weight in sugar, we begin to see the scale of the problem. I agree with the point made by the hon. Lady.

I have the pleasure of serving on the Health Committee with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who will shortly be speaking for the Scottish National party. She has often told us that Scotland has got certain things better than England, and some of the time she may have been right. On this issue, we can learn from what is happening in Scotland, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley said as well.

Chapter 3 of the report from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, which I quoted from earlier, includes some graphs that show improvement in children’s oral hygiene. Somewhat irritatingly, the graphs end in 2013, but the rate of improvement in Scotland is clearly shown to be superior to the rate in England, Wales or Northern Ireland, as a result of the Childsmile programme, which I understand costs £17 per child. Set that cost against the £836 average cost of a child tooth extraction and, for my money, I would rather put more focus on prevention. I want to see the English treated as well as other parts of the United Kingdom.