Child Dental Health

Alistair Burt Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Community and Social Care (Alistair Burt)]

It is a great pleasure to respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) and his excellent speech. The House has been fortunate to benefit from his professional knowledge on a number of occasions. As a new Minister coming into office some nine months ago, I had an early meeting with him, from which I benefited hugely and continue to benefit. I am grateful for the way in which he put his case and for the heads-up in respect of what I might do and the speech that I might make to the British Dental Association in due course.

I am grateful that the usual suspects have been here to listen because of their interest in these matters, namely the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Nottingham North (Mr Allen). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who is the public health Minister, for being here, together with the Whip and the Parliamentary Private Secretary. I also saw the hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff), who has been to see me to talk about dental matters and who clearly cares very much about these issues.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley on securing this very important debate about children’s dental health. Poor oral health in children and young people can affect their ability to sleep, eat, speak, play and socialise with other children. Other impacts include pain, infections, poor diet and impaired nutrition and growth. When children are not healthy, it affects their ability to learn, thrive and develop. To benefit fully from education, children need to enter school ready to learn and to be healthy, and they must be prepared emotionally, behaviourally and socially. Poor oral health may also result in children being absent from school to seek treatment or because they are in pain. Parents may also have to take time off work to take their children to the dentist. This is not simply a health issue; it impacts on children’s development and the economy.

It is a fact that the two main dental diseases, dental decay and gum disease, can be almost eliminated by the combination of good diet and correct tooth brushing, backed up by regular examination by a dentist. Despite that, as my hon. Friend has set out, their prevalence rates in England are still too high. Dental epidemiological surveys have been carried out for the past 30 years in England and give a helpful picture of the prevalence and trends in oral health. Public Health England is due to report on the most recent five-year-olds survey in the late spring.

There is a mixture of news, as the House might expect. The good news is that the data we have at present show that oral health in five-year-olds is better than it has ever been, with 72% of five-year-old children in England decay free. Between 2008 and 2012, the number of five-year-old children who showed signs of decay fell by approximately 10%. The mean number of decayed, missing or filled teeth was less than one, at 0.94. Indeed, the data suggest that, notwithstanding the All Blacks’ rugby success and their bone-crushing efforts on the field, oral health in children is currently better in England than in New Zealand. New Zealand’s data for children aged five in 2013 showed that the proportion who were disease free was 57.5% and that the mean number of decayed, missing or filled teeth was 1.88.

[Jim Shannon]

We have had a marked reduction in dental decay in children since the year 2000, as I said earlier in an intervention. With respect, Minister, I would say that we are doing some good work in Northern Ireland. The Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) knows that I always say, “Let’s exchange ideas and information.” We are doing good work in Northern Ireland and we want to tell Ministers about it.

[Alistair Burt]

This is possibly the fourth or fifth invitation that I have received from my hon. Friend to come to see different things in Northern Ireland, and he is right about every one. He finds in me a willing ear, and we will make a visit because there are several different things to see. Where devolved Administrations and the Department can learn from each other, that matters, and I will certainly take up my hon. Friend’s offer.

In older children there are challenges when comparing different countries, because of how the surveys are carried out. The available data still show that we have among the lowest rates of dental decay in Europe, but despite that solid progress we must do more. There is disparity of experience between the majority of children who suffer little or no tooth decay, and the minority who suffer decay that is sometimes considerable and can start in early life. In this House, we know the children who I am talking about—it is a depressingly familiar case. We can picture those children as we speak, as my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley described in the sometimes horrific parts of what he told the House. The fact that we know that such decay affects children in particular circumstances makes us weep.

Public Health England’s 2013 dental survey of three-year-olds found that of the children in England whose parents gave consent for their participation in the survey, 12% had already experienced dental decay. On average, those children had three teeth that were decayed, missing or filled. Their primary, or baby, teeth will only have just developed at that age, so it is highly distressing for the child, parents, and dental teams who need to treat them. Dental decay is the top cause of childhood admissions to hospitals in seven to nine-year-olds. In 2013-14, the total number of children admitted to hospital for extraction of decayed teeth in England was 63,196. Of those, 10,001 were nought to four-year-olds, and so would start school with missing teeth.

From April 2016, a new oral health indicator will be published in the NHS outcome framework based on the extraction of teeth in hospital in children aged 10 and under. That indicator will allow us to monitor the level of extractions, with the aim of reducing the number of children who need to be referred for extractions in the medium term. Extractions are a symptom of poor oral health, and the key is to tackle the cause of that. Today I commit that my officials will work with NHS England, Public Health England and local authorities to identify ways to reach those children most in need, and to ensure that they are able and encouraged to access high-quality preventive advice and treatment.

The good news is that the transfer of public health responsibilities to local authorities provides new opportunities for the improvement of children’s oral health. Local authorities are now statutorily obliged to provide or commission oral health promotion programmes to improve the health of the local population, to an extent that they consider appropriate in their areas. In order to support local authorities in exercising those responsibilities, Public Health England published “Local Authorities improving oral health: commissioning better oral health for children” in 2014. That document gives local authorities the latest evidence on what works to improve children’s oral health.

The commitment of the hon. Member for Nottingham North to early intervention and the improvement of children’s chances is noteworthy and well recognised in this House and beyond, and of course he can come to see me. I would be happy to discuss with him what he wants to promote in Nottingham, which sounds just the sort of initiative we need.

Public Health England is also addressing oral health in children as a priority as part of its “Best Start in Life” programme. That includes working with and learning from others, such as the “Childsmile” initiative in Scotland, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley referred. It is important that health visitors—I know that the Public Health Minister takes a particular interest in their work—midwives, and the wider early years workforce have access to evidence-based oral health improvement training to enable them to support families to improve oral health.

Public Health England and the Royal College of Surgeons Faculty of Dental Practice are working with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health to review the dental content of the red book—the personal child health record—to provide the most up-to-date evidence-based advice and support for parents and carers. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has also produced recent oral health guidance that makes recommendations on undertaking oral health needs assessments, developing a local strategy on oral health, and delivering community-based interventions and activities for all age groups, including children. Community initiatives to improve oral health include supervised fluoride tooth-brushing schemes, fluoride varnish schemes and water fluoridation.

I agree with my hon. Friend that water fluoridation is an effective way of reducing dental decay. However, as the House knows, the matter is not in my hands. Decisions on water fluoridation are best taken locally and local authorities now have responsibility for making proposals regarding any new fluoridation schemes. I am personally in favour. I think I am the only Member in the Chamber who remembers Ivan Lawrence and the spectacular debates we had on fluoridation in the 1980s. He made one of the longest speeches ever. Fluoridation was bitterly and hard-fought-for and I do not think there is any prospect of pushing the matter through the House at present. I am perfectly convinced by the science and that is my personal view, but this is a matter that must be taken on locally.

Diet is also key to improving children’s teeth and Public Health England published “Sugar reduction: the evidence for action” in October 2015. Studies indicate that higher consumption of sugar and sugar-containing foods and drinks is associated with a greater risk of dental caries in children—no surprise there. Evidence from the report showed that a number of levers could be successful, although I agree with my hon. Friend that it is unlikely that a single action alone would be effective in reducing sugar intake.

The evidence suggests that a broad, structured approach involving restrictions on price promotions and marketing, product reformulation, portion size reduction and price increases on unhealthy products, implemented in parallel, is likely to have the biggest impact. Positive changes to the food environment, such as the public sector procuring, providing and selling healthier foods, as well as information and education, are also needed to help to support people in making healthier choices.

Dentists have a key role to play. “Delivering Better Oral Health” is an evidence-based guide to prevention in dental practice. It provides clear advice for dental teams on preventive care and interventions that could be delivered in dental practice and school settings. Regular fluoride varnish is now advised by Public Health England for all children at risk of tooth decay.

For instance, the evidence shows that twice yearly application of fluoride varnish to children’s teeth—more often for children at risk—can have a positive impact on reducing dental decay. In 2014-15, for children, courses of treatment that included a fluoride varnish increased by 24.6% on the previous year to 3.4 million. Fluoride varnishes now equate to 30.9% of all child treatments, compared with 25.2% last year. This is encouraging progress.

There are many measures that can and should be taken in order to reduce the prevalence of decay in children, but we recognise it is unlikely that we will be able to eradicate entirely the causes or the effects of poor oral health in children. This means that the continued provision of high quality NHS primary dental services will continue to be an important part of ensuring that every child in England enjoys as high a standard of oral health as possible. NHS England has a duty to commission services to improve the health of the population and reduce inequalities—this is surely an issue of inequality—and also a statutory duty to commission primary dental services to meet local need. NHS England is committed to improving commissioning of primary care dentistry within the overall vision of the “Five Year Forward View”.

[Mr Allen]

The Prime Minister announced an excellent initiative on life chances less than two weeks ago. The cornerstone of that was improving parenting skills. Will the Minister’s Department ensure that feeding into that process there is, within the parenting programmes, stuff around health in general, but dental health in particular?

[Alistair Burt]

Yes. [Interruption.] Immediate information passed to me by the Minister with responsibility for public health indicates that that is a very positive initiative and we are indeed taking it up.

Overall, children’s access to NHS dentistry remains consistently high, with the number of children seen in the 24 months to September 2015 by an NHS dentist standing at 8 million, or 69.6% of the population. There are localised areas where children have access difficulties, but the more common problem is that the parents and carers of the children most at risk do not seek care until the child has developed some disease—this again emphasises the importance of health visitors and others in the process.

To help focus on prevention, the Government are committed to reforming the current system of primary care dentistry to improve access and oral health further. In line with the welcome improvements in oral health over the last 50 years, we need an approach in primary care dentistry that can provide a focus on prevention, while also incentivising treatment where needed.

That is why, following the piloting of the preventative clinical pathway, we are now prototyping a whole possible new system remunerated through a blend of quality, capitation and activity payments. The aim is to allow dentists to focus on prevention and, where appropriate, treatment, and how effective that could be for the children we are talking about. The new approach will be tested until at least 2017. We need to do a proper evaluation and, if successful, numbers will increase with a possibility of a national roll-out for 2018-19.

I hope I have been able to demonstrate the seriousness with which the Government take this subject—a seriousness that I know is accepted by the whole House. It comes back to some fundamental issues of inequality in health that are, as I said, depressingly familiar and which we are all absolutely dedicated to removing. The concept of total clearance for a child—I suspect that none of us has had to contemplate that in our personal lives, but it affects some of our constituents—is something that brings us all up short. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley for raising this subject for debate.

Question put and agreed to.