Access to NHS Dentists Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebatePaula Sherriff
Main Page: Paula Sherriff (Labour - Dewsbury)Department Debates - View all Paula Sherriff's debates with the Department of Health and Social Care
(6 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberIn today’s NHS, the word “crisis” is sadly all too commonplace. Week in, week out, crisis grips our NHS. We see it played out across our front pages: in our money-strapped and creaking social care system, in our overflowing A&Es, and in the ever longer delays in accessing even basic procedures such as knee and hip replacements. For health professionals right across this country, it must be beyond frustrating that where the Government are concerned, it takes nothing less than a full-blown crisis before a Minister is willing to sit up and take notice.
What we see unfolding in NHS dental practices in communities right across this country is yet another crisis. The British Dental Association agrees. A BBC investigation last week revealed that of 2,500 dental practices listed on the NHS Choices website, half were not willing to accept new adult NHS patients—half of all practices.
I have raised with the Minister and his predecessors for over two years now the terrible dental services in Dewsbury, and we have not yet reached any resolution. Does my hon. Friend agree that while looking at this issue we must try to achieve a resolution for the whole of West Yorkshire?
Absolutely.
More disturbingly, 40% of practices were unwilling to take children as NHS patients. Millions of people each and every year are being left without access to an NHS dentist. The human cost of this crisis is huge. Families, parents and young children are suffering horrific, lifelong and extreme damage to their teeth and to their oral health. Stories of people resorting to pulling out their own teeth are increasingly commonplace. Images of young children—toddlers—with mouths full of rotten teeth are less and less of a rarity.