Oral Health and Dentistry: England

Navendu Mishra Excerpts

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Navendu Mishra (Stockport) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Bardell. My gratitude goes to my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), as this debate is timely and important for all our communities. He is a long-standing champion of better public services for all.

I begin by thanking all dentists and dental staff in our country. They do a difficult job and the pandemic has made it even harder. I know from experience that the British Dental Association plays an important role in supporting the dental community and, of course, patients, and I am grateful to it. Earlier this week, there were reports in the media regarding the state of our dental industry. As ever, it is the most disadvantaged in our communities who have borne the brunt of the crisis in the sector. Healthwatch England reported that it had seen a significant rise in calls and complaints at the start of this year. The pandemic has been an unprecedented challenge, but it cannot be acceptable that in one of the richest countries in the world some people have been informed that they have to wait up to three years to see a dentist.

Shockingly, 22% of children under five in Stockport have experience of tooth decay, which compares unfavourably with the best area in England, where only 7% of children have decay. In addition, last year 300 children in Stockport had teeth extracted under a general anaesthetic in a hospital due to tooth decay. In the latest GP patient survey, 14% of adults surveyed in the Stockport clinical commissioning group area said that they had not tried to get an appointment with an NHS dentist in the past two years because they assumed that none would be available. Only 2% said that they were currently on a waiting list for an appointment. The British Dental Association has welcomed the Government’s commitment to dental contract reform, but these reforms must be meaningful. They must expand access to NHS dentists across England because private treatment is not accessible to everyone.

It is an old saying that prevention is better than cure, so these reforms must also prioritise prevention. In the past two years, 135 children were admitted to hospitals in England for extraction of decayed teeth every single day. Shockingly, this continues to be the No.1 reason for children under five being admitted to hospitals in the UK. The data tells us that supervised tooth brushing improves oral health, but also saves money in the long term. We need a dedicated funding package in England for these programmes.

As is often the case, underfunding is the basis of many long-term problems. The data on the number of practices providing NHS dentistry makes for depressing reading. The British Dental Association has reported that the number of practices providing NHS dentistry fell by more than 1,200 in the past five years. Adding the pandemic to this equation means that the nation is facing an exodus of dentists from the NHS. As I said, the upcoming reforms must be meaningful and expand access to NHS dentists across the country.

In March, I tabled three separate written parliamentary questions regarding people on waiting lists to register with an NHS dentist in Stockport, in the north-west region and in England. Unfortunately, the Minister’s answers to all my questions were the same. It is simply unacceptable that the Department of Health and Social Care does not hold this data centrally. How can we expect the Government to tackle the serious and long-term issues relating to NHS dentistry if they do not even hold the data centrally? That suggests that the Government are either not taking this crisis seriously or are woefully underprepared to tackle it.

Frustratingly, as several Members on both sides of the House have highlighted in the main Chamber, we have seen a pattern of behaviour from the Department of Health and Social Care of taking an unreasonably long time to respond to letters, queries and written parliamentary questions from MPs. That is simply not acceptable and makes our role of representing our constituents all the harder.

The Government must reform the system so that everyone has access to an NHS dentist, within a reasonable distance and timescale. We are facing a dental crisis. We must do more to ensure that the most vulnerable in our communities have access to treatment and no longer face the prospect of being priced out of treatment.