Access to Primary Healthcare

Gideon Amos Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)]

I mainly want to talk about dentistry, but first let me support the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke). GPs in my constituency are leaving at an alarming rate, which is a problem of great concern across Somerset.

We have heard about the Sahara desert; if Norfolk is the eastern Sahara, Somerset and Devon are the western Sahara of dental deserts. More than half the children in Somerset did not have access to an NHS dentist last year, which puts Somerset in the worst-hit 5% of local authority areas in the country. The picture for adults is pretty similar. I set up a survey back in 2022 to draw attention to the lack of dentistry in Taunton and Wellington. Official NHS figures show that in 2015, the majority—56%—had access to an NHS dentist, but that has gone down to only 32% this year.

As has been said, 99% of people who need an NHS dentist cannot get one. That is a totally unacceptable situation and a primary care time bomb because, as we have heard, the biggest cause of hospital admission for children under six is tooth decay. Also, oral cancers are on the rise year on year, and without early detection by dentists, that will only get worse. Just as the social contract under which people felt that they would get care is broken, so is the dental contract itself. I urge the Government to tell the House how soon they will repair the dental contract and when they will increase the units of dental activity payments so that the contract works. We need a timescale for addressing that.

My constituent Kathryn had been with her NHS dentist for 20 years. Like so many others, she lost them when that dentist withdrew NHS treatment. But unlike many other people, Kathryn is undergoing treatment for secondary breast cancer, the side effects of which mean that her doctor has instructed her to have regular dental treatment. She is now using her hard-earned savings to pay for that dental treatment because it is not possible to get it on the NHS in Somerset. It is disgraceful and totally unacceptable that cancer sufferers are using their hard-earned savings to repair the damage of the legacy of appalling NHS dental services left by the last Government.