NHS Dentistry: South-west

Alison Bennett Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Alison Bennett (Mid Sussex) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) for securing this debate. The strength of the contributions by south-west Members from all parts of the House show how important this issue is for everyone in the region. I thank my hon. Friend for making the debate about the south-west. I grew up in Gloucestershire, and my dentistry as a child began in Tewkesbury. The comment by the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) that dental treatment is preventive in its own right was helpful. Indeed, thanks to the insistence of my mother, Christine, on my going to the dentist twice a year, I never got a filling until I was into my 40s. I thank her for that.

While I welcome the Government’s injection of funds into the NHS as a whole, we must be clear that dentistry should not be forgotten. That is why I, along with many of my Liberal Democrat colleagues, have today written to the Chancellor of the Exchequer to ask her to reconsider the proposed increases in employer national insurance contributions in the case of various healthcare providers, including the dentistry sector and those providing NHS dentistry. Commenting on that letter, the British Dental Association said that the changes, should they go ahead, will inevitably punish patients.

Before coming to this debate, I had meetings with the National Care Forum and the children’s hospice charity Together for Short Lives. In all those forums, grave concerns have been raised about the impact of the increase in employer national insurance contributions on the work that providers do, and the potential cuts to the number of people they employ and the services they offer. I ask the Minister to urge his team in the Department of Health and Social Care to reconsider and to press the Treasury to rethink the increase, or at least look at finding some form of dispensation.

As hon. Members have said, tooth decay is the most common reason for hospital admission in children between the ages of six and 10. Thanks to a freedom of information request commissioned by the Liberal Democrats, we know that over 100,000 children have been admitted to hospital with rotting teeth since 2018. That is shameful, yet also entirely preventable. That is what makes it so tragic.

Our failures stretch across the full breadth of age groups. Last year, a poll commissioned by the Liberal Democrats revealed that a shocking one in five people who fail to get an NHS appointment turn to DIY dentistry. Indeed, during the general election, I knocked on the door of somebody who told me that he had pulled his own teeth out. It is simply Victorian that that has happened to dentistry in our country in 2024. The Darzi review found that

“only about 30 and 40 per cent of NHS dental practices are accepting new child and adult registrations respectively.”

To me, and I think to everyone here, the fact that our dentistry system is in a position where people feel the need to pull out their own teeth is appalling.

The south-west is feeling the full force of the crisis, having lost more than 100 dentists last year alone. However, the issue is not limited to the south-west. Only one of the 13 dentists in my constituency of Mid Sussex is accepting children as NHS patients, and none is accepting adults. Using data from the House of Commons Library, it is estimated that 44% of children in West Sussex did not see a dentist in the year to March 2024.

My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I are calling for three things and we have a plan to make them happen. First, we need guaranteed access to an NHS dentist for everyone who needs urgent and emergency care. Secondly, we need guaranteed access to free NHS check-ups for those already eligible: children, new mothers, those who are pregnant and those on low incomes. Thirdly, we need guaranteed appointments for all those who need a dental check before commencing surgery, chemotherapy or a transplant.

The first thing that we can do to achieve those vital baselines in dental care is to deliver a dental rescue package, including investing in extra dental appointments, fixing the broken NHS dental contract and using flexible commissioning to meet patient needs. Secondly, we need to ensure that a proper workforce plan for health and social care, including projections for dentists and dental staff, is written into law. Thirdly, we would reverse the previous Government’s cuts to public health grants to support preventive dental healthcare. We must tackle the root causes of the oral health catastrophe in the south-west by focusing on investment in prevention. In doing so, we can put an end to the suffering of so many children and adults, take away the need for DIY dentistry and provide some much-needed respite for the NHS system as a whole.