Children’s Oral Health

Judith Cummins Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I recently led a well-attended Adjournment debate on the growing crisis in NHS dentistry, and I was encouraged that that critical topic received such wide-spread support. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for securing this important debate.

I believe that momentum is building for a change in Government oral health policy. The injustices in child oral and dental health provision deserve greater prominence in debates about this country’s faltering health services. For too long, oral and dental health has been overshadowed by understandable concerns about other areas of the NHS, but addressing wider issues in our NHS should not mean that we forget to take action elsewhere. For too long, oral and dental health has been the Cinderella service of our NHS. That must end.

During my Adjournment debate, I spent considerable time setting out the growing crisis in NHS dentistry for our children and young people. I highlighted the BBC’s recent investigation, which laid bare the scale of the challenges. Shockingly, two in five of the 2,500 dental practices registered on the NHS Choices website were unwilling to accept children as new patients.

NHS treatment is so important. For our children and young people, it can be life-defining. It can be a springboard to a life marked by enduring oral health and wellbeing. It can be the bedrock of successful, healthy and prosperous lives through childhood and into old age.

The unnecessary financial cost of our children’s poor oral health to the NHS is staggering. At a time of huge pressure on our NHS, the Government are wasting a forecast £50 million each year on tooth extractions for our children and young people. The average cost of a tooth extraction is £834. Last year alone, almost 40,000 children were admitted to hospital for multiple tooth extractions, which is shocking as it is an entirely preventable condition. Sadly, that situation is getting worse and tooth extractions are up by 25% in recent years. Across the country, tooth decay is the No. 1 reason for children being admitted to hospital.

Following my Adjournment debate, I was grateful to meet the Minister. I felt that we had a constructive meeting and that there was a good chance that at least some progress would be made to improve the availability of NHS dentistry in my constituency and the surrounding areas, where the need is so clear. Three weeks on from that meeting, however, and some six months on from the conclusion of an NHS pilot in Bradford designed to improve the availability of NHS dentists to the people I represent, I am still waiting to see the official assessment of the pilot.

I asked about the report on the pilot in a recent written question, and yet it remains elusive. I suspect that the official report remains so because it confirms more than a few inconvenient truths: that the take-up of the additional NHS dentistry appointments under the pilot was overwhelming—I understand from the previous Minister that take-up was 92%, even on an unadvertised pilot—and that there is therefore overwhelming evidence that NHS dentistry provision in my constituency is abysmal and requires a huge funding uplift. Indeed, a freedom of information request submitted to the Bradford hospitals trust revealed that, in the short period of April to December 2016, 190 of our children were admitted to hospital to undergo multiple tooth extractions.

I ask the Minister again to reflect on such disturbing figures and, as I have his attention, I reiterate my request that he shares with me the official assessment of the recent pilot in Bradford as a matter of urgency. Once again, therefore—twice in a few short months—I am urging the Government to act, because each year 40,000 of our children are undergoing multiple tooth extractions in our overstretched NHS. I urge the Minister to take action; it is long overdue, and inaction is not an option. Our children and young people frankly deserve better.