Access to Primary Healthcare

Ben Maguire Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ben Maguire (North Cornwall) (LD)]

I congratulate all those who have made excellent maiden speeches today. I also congratulate the handful of Conservative Members who came out to try to defend their indefensible record on the NHS.

When it comes to NHS dentistry, constituencies such as mine are some of the worst affected by the dental deserts all around the country that we have heard about today—the shocking legacy of the Conservatives. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dorking and Horley (Chris Coghlan) and others have said, we must have NHS dental contract reform now—no more delays, no more excuses.

One in five dentists have left Cornwall since 2019, and the number of urgent dental cases is spiralling out of control. I am not exaggerating when I say that upset, distressed parents contact me every single day about their children’s rotting teeth. They cannot find NHS dentists, and they are completely at a loss. Only last week, a panicked and anxious parent called Georgina got in touch with me because her daughter Phoebe, just 10 years old, was in need of emergency dental care, and had already missed a lot of school as a result. She needed to have a rotting tooth removed, but her mother could not find an NHS dentist, so instead she was sent to the Treliske hospital. Just a few days later, Phoebe was urgently admitted to A&E with extreme facial swelling. She was taken into surgery, where the rotten tooth was removed after much pain and distress. Her face had swollen to the size of a tennis ball, and she has now been off school for weeks.

The stress and anxiety that this experience caused Phoebe—who, by the way, has complex special educational needs—her mother and the rest of the family was completely unnecessary. If Phoebe had just been given a place with an NHS dentist, the strain on the family and, importantly, the hospital that treated her would have been avoided entirely. During the election campaign, a teacher from Wadebridge admitted to me that she had resorted to using pliers to extract a rotten tooth, as the alternative was to receive treatment as far away as Nottingham. More than 100 children were admitted to hospital with tooth decay in Cornwall last year alone. The House needs to come together and ensure that the problem of dental deserts that we have heard about all day today is solved once and for all. What kind of society are we if we allow our children —indeed, people of all ages—to suffer like this?