NHS Dentistry: South-west

Rebecca Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Smith (South West Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) on securing this vital debate about NHS dentistry in the south-west.

My constituents know the issues with access to NHS dentists only too well. Since 2020, the number of dentists in the county has fallen from 549 to 497. That means that each remaining dentist must see almost 300 additional patients a year. It is clear that we have a significant shortage of dentists in Devon. Only 34.7% of adults in the county have seen a dentist in the past year, compared with 55% 10 years ago. As we also heard from the hon. Member for Exeter (Steve Race), very few children are seeing dentists: 46.6% of children in Devon in the past year, compared with 61% in 2016.

For those who live in or around Ivybridge in my constituency, there are currently only two dental practices within a 10-mile radius accepting new patients. That only gets worse for the more rural and coastal communities, and the statistics are not good for the communities within the Plymouth boundary. I am aware that an anomaly in Devon is that there is actually a waiting list for NHS dentists.

At one recent meeting with local senior health officials, it was pointed out that Devon’s waiting list is unusual, perhaps even unique. We have 60,000 people on that list, believing they are entitled to an NHS dentist, when, as was discussed at the same meeting and I was led to believe on the day, the existing NHS contract was designed to serve only 55% of the adult population. The assumption was that others would access dental care privately.

I am not making a judgment about whether that is right or wrong; I am just stating the fact that most people do not understand that. The dental system was set up to be more like that for opticians than GPs at the time. The issues we currently face in Devon have in many ways gone beyond those points’ being particularly relevant, but it is worth reflecting how important it is to be honest with people, as we make changes, to ensure they understand what the impact of those changes might be for them.

Before I reach the main point I wish to make today, I will briefly mention two challenges we face in Devon: how we train dentists and how NHS contracts are awarded. Devon is fortunate to have an outstanding dental school at the University of Plymouth. When it opened, many believed it would provide the city and the region beyond with a ready supply of new dentists to help us tackle our dental shortage. The school, however, is so successful that it is incredibly difficult to secure a place to study there, which has an impact on local people’s being able to study at home and perhaps stay after graduation.

Equally, I have been informed by an expert on dental training that the way we train dentists makes it very difficult for people to stay where they have studied. Currently, the system almost forces the non-local dentists—the ones that might be coming down from the midlands —to go back to where they came from, rather than staying in the south-west if they want to. I urge the Minister to look into what more can be done to ensure that students can more easily stay where they have studied; at the moment, even if a dental student falls in love with Devon, it is very difficult for them to stay and help us to solve our problems.

Secondly, I am concerned about the lack of flexibility in the awarding of new NHS contracts at a time when we are in desperate need of more dentists. I was contacted about a year ago by a dentist seeking to open a practice in my constituency, who was told by the ICB that the window for applications had closed. That may have been the case but, given that we are in such dire need of dentists, perhaps an exception could have been made.

That leads me, finally, to my main point. In the last 12 months, 876 people attended the emergency department at Derriford hospital for a dental reason. Of those, 18% were under the age of 20 and 82% were over 20. That is an average of 2.4 people per day having to resort to using the emergency department to access dental care. Of these patients, 77 were then admitted for treatment. That is why we need to see the stalled review into funding for Derriford hospital’s urgent and emergency care facility, because it is part of the bigger picture of how we provide dental care across the south-west. If we free up emergency, we have more capacity to look after the region more fully.