Access to NHS Dentistry

Selaine Saxby Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this important debate.

I am all too aware of the issues surrounding the availability of dentists in North Devon. I could not find an NHS dentist when I moved there in 2017. I continued to travel back to my previous dentist in Wiltshire for 18 months until I was lucky enough to find one. On election in 2019, my first surgery was with a dental nurse detailing the discrepancies between her terms and conditions and those of other nurses in our healthcare system, as well as the issues surrounding the contracts making NHS dentistry unattractive to a growing number of dentists.

The lack of availability of dentists in North Devon significantly precedes the pandemic. The south-west is particularly poorly served when it comes to dentists. At 0.5%, the south-west average for hospital dental extractions for nought to 19-year-olds exceeds the England average of 0.4%. The figure for North Devon of 0.8% is double the England average, which is unacceptable.

In Devon, just 36% of children and only 43% of adults have seen a dentist in the last year, compared with 60% of children and 51% of adults before the pandemic.

William Shakespeare wrote in “Much Ado About Nothing”:

“For there was never yet philosopher

That could endure the toothache patiently”.

It is not just philosophers who cannot endure toothache patiently—neither can we. My constituents write in their droves to me about their problems accessing dental services.

Only this morning, I was contacted by a retired couple who have recently moved to my constituency. They cannot afford private dental treatment. Despite being mydentist patients in their former home, they have been advised that there is a five-year wait for a place with the same company in North Devon.

Another constituent wrote:

“I moved to Devon in Sept 2018 transferring into the area where my skills were required. I am an average wage earner and in this time have been on a waiting list for an NHS Dentist. I now have a dental problem. I used an emergency service yesterday and paid the £23 fee to sit in the chair for a little over a minute and told I need to find a dentist and have a crown fitted ASAP. The dentist kindly disposed of the chunk of tooth that broke away. I can’t even register with a private dentist let alone an NHS one. I have been warned private treatment will cost around £600.”

Another constituent has been a patient at Barnstaple dental practice for seven years and has paid for private treatment ever since moving there. They told me that they never thought they would be in situation whereby their children were not able to receive NHS treatment. In August 2021, they received three letters advising them that there would be no further NHS treatment for children at the practice.

A school holiday trip to the dentist was part of my childhood. I find it deeply concerning that children in my North Devon constituency are unable to do the same. All too many children have never seen a dentist. Given the statistics I have shared regarding young people in North Devon needing hospital extractions, we are storing up even greater dental issues for the future.

Surely it is possible for dentists to attend schools and check our youngsters’ teeth. There has to be a way to facilitate that. I hope that the Minister is looking into innovative solutions, including whether the 100 community diagnostic centres promised by her Department will also house a dentist facility, as the oral health backlog seems to predate the pandemic.

During lockdown, I met Dr Vinay Raniga from mydentist, who had some suggestions for what more could be done to secure more dentists in the short term. Additional training places for UK dentists are to be welcomed, but the time lag is far too long. We know that the contract needs addressing, but the fundamental issue in my constituency is a lack of actual dentists.

One suggestion is to simplify the processes that enable internationally trained dentists to come to work in the UK. We should take advantage of Brexit and harness the power of the Commonwealth, in particular the over-supply of dentists in India who are available to come to work in the UK. I very much hope that steps are being taken to work with our Indian friends to rebalance this dental supply inequality.

The Minister and I have already exchanged correspondence on this matter, and I know that steps are under way, but I fear that the magnitude of the problem in remote coastal constituencies such as mine needs bigger and bolder interventions. The £50 million is warmly welcome. After speaking with the Minister yesterday, I checked with my clinical commissioning group whether steps were under way to ensure that my local dentists are able to access that funding. NHS England has written to all dental providers in the region and has gathered 51 expressions of interest, of which only 31 meet the criteria set. I am not sure what is wrong with the other 20, but that raises further concerns.

In the south-west, we have retained our urgent dental hubs and have an urgent dental care initiative, providing an extra 1,100 appointments a week. That is of course welcome, but those appointments are for the whole of the south-west of England, and the contents of my inbox tell me that it will go nowhere near covering the demand in North Devon.

Last summer, the chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty highlighted the health disparities in coastal communities compared with their inland neighbours. It is not just positive dental health outcomes that are hard to come by in my North Devon constituency. I know that the Minister is aware of the issues, but we urgently need our children to be able to access dental check-ups. As the social activist, Geoffrey Canada observed:

“Good dental care doesn’t make you a good student, but if your tooth hurts, it’s hard to be a good student.”

The depth of dental decay cannot wait. We need more dentists available to see us now.