- Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Craig Whittaker.)
- 9:19 pm
- I am grateful to have secured this evening’s Adjournment debate on access to NHS dentistry in Bristol and the south-west. Over the past few months, many of my constituents have told me how difficult it has become to find and access an NHS dentist in and around my constituency of Bristol North West. Their accounts have been wide-ranging, from having their NHS treatment left in limbo following the closure of a local practice to having to look as far as Gloucester to try and register as a new patient with an NHS provider.In particular, last year an NHS dental surgery in Southmead in my constituency unexpectedly closed to patients. Many of my constituents were left without an NHS dentist, often mid-treatment. One constituent explained that they had paid for NHS treatment prior to the closure of the dental surgery but had been unable to secure another appointment with a local dentist. Their dental work remains incomplete. Another constituent described contacting nine dental practices across Bristol to try and resume their treatment as soon as possible, only to be told that none was accepting NHS patients.
- I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate; I have similar stories from my constituents. Does he agree that we also need to think about pregnant women, for example, who have free access to care but are also being denied access to dentistry at a really important point of their life?
- I absolutely agree, and I thank my hon. Friend for her contributions, not least as a leading voice on healthcare policy, knowing that prevention is more important than cure.A third constituent of mine rang over 25 practices across the south-west, but was unable to secure an appointment as an NHS patient—something that has affected patients who were pregnant as well as everyone else. Southmead in particular is now left without any NHS dentists at all.
- The number of child patients nearly halved in 2021 compared with 2019, with a 42% decrease in the south-west, including my constituency and his. Is the hon. Member as concerned as I am that the most worrying part of these statistics concerns the loss of access to dental treatment for children?
- I do share that concern, because we know that children in particular are seeing the dentist on a fewer and fewer occasions, and I understand that the tooth extraction rate for children is increasing significantly because of a lack of prevention.
- Some 3,925 teeth were removed from Plymouth children under anaesthesia in 2019-20. The figure was lower last year because of the pandemic, but does my hon. Friend agree that we will not solve this crisis until children get to keep the teeth in their mouths through better oral health, and that we will not get that until the dental crisis is properly addressed by Government?
- I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; as ever, he is a strong advocate for his constituents. He identifies that children are ending up having teeth extracted in emergency situations instead of seeing the dentist in the first place.While the three cases that I have referred to have stemmed from the closure of the same dental practice in Southmead in my constituency, their stories serve to highlight the difficulties faced by those across Bristol and the south-west in accessing NHS treatment.
- Luke Hall (Thornbury and Yate) (Con)The hon. Gentleman highlights Southmead; may I highlight another important case for the record? The closure of the Frampton dental practice has left many of my constituents unable to secure any type of dental support at all. He is therefore quite right to say this is an issue right across the region and to bring it to the Minister’s attention, so may I offer him my full support in this debate? Although we are grateful for the NHS’s medium-term response, there are lots of people seeking treatment now who cannot access it. I therefore offer him my support and call on the Minister to meet me to discuss the issue in further detail.
- I thank the hon. Member, because it sounds as if his constituents are suffering the same problem as mine. Many have rung eight, nine or 10 NHS service providers, to be told that they could be accepted only as a private fee-paying patient. Going private is simply not an option that many of my constituents can afford. Some have been left with no other choice and others have just not been able to see a dentist at all. Outside of emergency cases, it seems that dentistry in our country has become merely a private healthcare service, with all the unacceptable inequalities that that presents.
- In many cases even emergency appointments are simply not available, given the number of people asking for them. The waiting time to get an NHS dentist in Exeter is currently two years. We have thousands and thousands of people in Devon as a whole with no access to an NHS dentist. They cannot afford to go private and they cannot get access, in pain, to emergency treatment. It is an absolute disgrace, and for the last eight years this Government have done nothing about it.
- I agree, and I thank my right hon. Friend for raising the case in Exeter, which seems similar to the many other cases we are hearing about this evening.When I surveyed my constituents, 79% of those who responded said that they did not feel that they could access a timely dental care appointment when they needed it, while 60% had not had any form of dental treatment during the past year. Twenty five per cent. detailed that they had contacted 11 or more dental practices to try to register for NHS treatment but were unable to do so.Information compiled by the Association of Dental Groups puts those conclusions in context. The ADG highlights that 43% of patients across Bristol alone were unable to book an appointment when they wanted to do so. That figure increases to over 50% of patients when considering the south-west altogether.In its 2021 “Great British Oral Health Report”, mydentist found that those in the south-west who have had a dental appointment in the last year lived, on average, over 5 miles away from their closest surgery. More concerningly, those who had not had a dental appointment in the last 12 months were twice as likely than the national average to live over 30 miles away from their closest surgery. That seems to suggest that there is a correlation between someone’s proximity to an NHS dentist and the amount of time that has elapsed since their last appointment, adding geographical inequality to income inequality in the often privatised dental care system—no doubt a levelling-up priority for the Government.This is a growing problem, with increasing numbers of NHS dentists closing and a shortage of dentists available to do the work. For those familiar with the south-west’s regional news, Thursday’s BBC “Spotlight” reported that the number of NHS dentists practising across the south-west had fallen by more than 200 between 2017 and 2021. Across the country, 45% of patients have been forced to pay for private care due to the closure of a local NHS dentist.
- I do not know whether my hon. Friend has written to Ministers about this. I have written to Ministers on behalf of constituents who are in pain and need emergency surgery, but cannot come up with thousands of pounds to pay for it. It is so frustrating when the response we get is a link to a site where they can check where their nearest NHS dentist is, or similarly useless bits of information. Does he share my concern that the Government are totally complacent about the crisis we face?
- I thank my hon. Friend for her contribution and I agree entirely. I know from my own experience of trying to get access to ministerial time following the closure of an NHS dental practice in Southmead that it took ages to get a response. I then had time with officials, who tried to be helpful but could not resolve the problem, and we had local briefings in Bristol where, I am afraid, the presentations and information were completely inadequate. That confirms my point that dentistry seems to be an afterthought, not a priority, for this Government.
- I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. Could he add one extra ask of Ministers—to keep the dentists we train in the west country in the west country? The last Labour Government opened a dental school in Plymouth that trains enormous numbers of high-quality dentists, but then they have to spend time in practice and they go into a national shuffle. If there was a regional shuffle to keep those dentists in the south-west, it is more likely that they would stay in the west country, providing additional services, rather than being spread across the country. Does he agree that would be a good idea?
- That sounds very sensible, and no doubt it would be a great levelling-up opportunity for the Government to ensure that dentists trained and qualified in the south-west stay there. I do not want to put particular pressure on this Minister, because this has been a long-running failure over many years.
- I have an interest here, clearly, but why should dentists, or any profession, be forced to stay and practise in the area they trained? No other profession has that. It would be a very unfair liability and tie on the dentists.
- I am not sure that was the suggestion from my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard); it was merely an opportunity for those who train in the south-west and who wish to stay there to do so, and I would support that.Ministers’ long-running failure to tackle this issue is resulting in hundreds of thousands of people across the country, not least many thousands of children, being unable to access NHS dentistry until it becomes an emergency and a hospitalised problem. That is unacceptable; it no doubt costs the Government more to treat problems instead of trying to prevent them, and I call on them to put in the work to fix this problem now. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s responses to my questions.