My Lords, it is a great pleasure once again to draw your Lordships’ attention to dentistry matters in relation to this statutory instrument. I declare an interest as president of the British Fluoridation Society and related bodies.
These regulations are important in themselves—more important than first meets the eye. They come within the context of wider issues around the problems that patients are having getting access to dentistry under the NHS. In our previous debate, a few weeks ago, I referred to the GP patient survey last year, in which 12.9% of those surveyed said that they had failed to get an NHS dental appointment in the last two years. If you count only those people who attempted to get an NHS appointment the first time, 24% failed to get an appointment in the last two years.
In the last few weeks, I have had urgent representation from the Shildon and Dene Valley branch of the Labour Party about the impact that the closure of BUPA Dental Care in Shildon and Bishop Auckland has had on providing NHS dental services. As the branch says, this is an area where only a minority of people can afford expensive private dental care. The closures will lead to an overall decline in dental health and to increases in related health problems. This is happening up and down the country.
When we debated this in June, the Minister referred to the July 2022 package of dental system improvements, which was aimed partly at improving patient information and at changes to the contract to provide some incentives. However, that is not sufficient to tackle the chronic access problems that patients have.
The announcement in the NHS workforce plan that the Government intend to
“Expand dentistry training places by 40%”
is, of course, very welcome indeed. However, the Minister will need to find some capital funds to help dentist schools expand, and I know the Minister will not be surprised if I mention that the
“tie-in period to encourage dentists to spend a minimum proportion of their time delivering NHS care”
has caused some eyebrows to be raised—although I actually sympathise with that proposition.