Government doing nothing to tackle dental crisis, says MP

The Government has ignored dental care and ordinary people are paying the price, Bath’s MP has told Parliament.

Wera Hobhouse, inset, told a debate on NHS dentistry that dental care is in a disgraceful state. She said just three in 10 people in Bath have seen a dentist, down from 50% in 2018, in the past two years.

And only six in 10 children in the city have been able to see a dentist in the past 12 months despite the NHS recommending all under-18s see a dentist once a year. The six in 10 number is down 20% on 2018.

Ms Hobhouse has said the lack of access to dental care is having real term consequences for people’s lives with 26% of people nationally having to delay seeing a dentist despite being in pain. And one in five have resorted to doing dangerous DIY dentistry due to the long waiting lists, she said.

She added: “The British Dental Association says we are facing an ‘existential threat.’ Their words are not an exaggeration. Tooth decay is the number one reason for hospital admissions in young people and oral cancer is now the fastest rising cancer, killing more people than car accidents each year in the UK.”

The MP said that staff shortages look set to exacerbate the crisis further with 14% of NHS dentists being close to leaving the profession and the number of NHS dentists as a whole dropping as demand increases. She said that in Bath’s Clinical Commissioning Group, the number of dentists has fallen by 15% since 2016. “The government is asleep at the wheel as yet another crisis creeps up on us. It admitted it does not know how many dental practices applied to access the extra £50 million in funding announced earlier this year.

Ms Hobhouse said: “The Government’s lack of attention to this deeply distressing issue is shameful. People are in genuine pain, doing clinical work on themselves out of desperation, all because the Government could not foresee this situation coming. It requires a longterm workforce plan, something the government simply does not have a sufficient grasp on.

“We need to increase the number of dentists training places in the UK and continue the recognition of EU trained dentists’ qualifications. Dentists must be incentivised to take NHS payments, and be supported by increased funding to ensure patient demand is met.”