NHS Dentists: South-West England

Wera Hobhouse Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Elliott.

In Bath and North East Somerset, more than 105,000 adults have not been seen by a dentist for two years. That is 44% higher than the number in 2018. Children are not faring any better: nearly 15,000 were not seen by an NHS dentist last year, which is an increase of 90% since 2018. Routine dental check-ups are a vital first line of defence against more serious problems such as oral cancer, which is one of the fastest rising types of cancer and claims more lives than car accidents in the UK. Meanwhile, tooth decay is now the most common reason for hospital admissions for young children.

The British Dental Association has said that NHS dentistry is facing an existential threat that long predates the pandemic. The shortage of NHS dentists means that it is now nearly impossible to get a dentist appointment in Bath. Last year’s NHS statistics for England show that my Bath constituency is one of the worst places for NHS dentistry in the country. There were just 44 NHS dentists per 100,000 people living in the area. The Association of Dental Groups described my constituency as a “dental desert”. It stated that this already dire situation will worsen unless the Government take urgent action.

Staff are leaving NHS dentistry at an alarming rate. One in eight are approaching retirement and 14% are close to leaving the profession. Nearly 15% of dentists have been lost from Bath’s clinical commissioning group since 2016. Committed dentists are being forced out of the NHS. The Prime Minister boasted that 500 new dentists are practising in the NHS because of a Government reform; in reality, more than 500 dentists do just one NHS check-up a year.

The British Dental Association described official data on NHS dentistry as a work of pure fiction. Recent polls indicate that more than half of dentists in England have reduced their NHS commitments since the start of the pandemic. That is not tracked in official workplace data: dentists doing one NHS check-up a year are weighted the same as an NHS full-timer. The British Dental Association says the Government have never attempted to collect data on the workload of NHS dentists, or on how much time they spend seeing private or NHS patients. I would like a commitment from the Minister that such data will be collected. We need it urgently to understand the extent of the crisis.

However, we need more than just data: we need urgent reform. We Liberal Democrats are calling for an NHS dental healthcare plan to ensure that everyone can access affordable dental care when they need to. To start, we must immediately invest the money set aside for NHS dentistry and focus it on boosting the numbers of NHS appointments. The Health Service Journal reported that the national dentistry budget is set to be underspent by a record £400 million this year. How can that be when we are facing such a crisis?

The current NHS dentistry contract does not encourage dentists to take on NHS patients. Many dentists simply earn more in the private sector, but frankly many dentists tell me that they can afford to stay open and take on NHS patients only because they are cross-financing NHS and private patients. How can that be? We Liberal Democrats would carry out wholesale reform of the dental contract so that dentists are incentivised to work as NHS dentists without the fear of having to close their doors.

The Government must also encourage those who are ready and able to be dentists to enter the profession. The cap on the number of dental school places available in the UK has remained static since 2013, despite increased demand for dentists. We cannot let this crisis escalate any further. We Liberal Democrats would put into law a proper workforce plan, which would include protections for dentists and dental staff. Dental care is a right that everyone in Bath and beyond should be entitled to. It is time the Government’s response matched the scale of the crisis.