That this House has considered progress on reforms to NHS dentistry.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for once again granting this important debate, and my co-sponsor, the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), for all his work in helping to secure it.
When preparing for the debate, I thought it was useful to consider and reflect on the foundations of our NHS in the Beveridge report, which was published 80 years ago last November. Although it would be an understatement to say that the world has changed since its publication, the identity of this country is still proudly centred around our national health service—an idea so powerfully contained in the pages of the report. For the great British social reformers of the 20th century, dentistry was not some Cinderella service of secondary importance. Beveridge concluded that no one could seriously doubt that a free dental service should become as universal as a free medical service. Eighty years after the report’s publication, it is time that the House reaffirmed our commitment to universal dental care in this country.
It is worth noting that the Beveridge report, in its proposition for universal access to NHS dentistry, was published by a multi-party coalition Government. As I stand here today, Members on both sides of the Chamber will agree that the crisis in NHS dentistry deserves the same cross-party attention that it was afforded 80 years ago, because the system has decayed: access has fallen to an historic low, and inaction over the past 13 years has caused untold damage. There can be no more half measures or excuses. Now is the time to establish a new preventive dental contract that is fit for the 21st century.
The words of my campaigning over the past eight years now serve as a compendium of forecasting doom. In 2016, I warned of a mounting crisis and drew the Government’s attention to a digital report warning that half of dentists were thinking of leaving the profession. Between 2017 and 2019, I warned that 60% of dentists were planning to leave NHS dentistry. In 2020, after years of repeated warnings, I once again informed the Government that 58% of the UK’s remaining dentists were planning on moving away from NHS dentistry within five years. The Government once again fudged and ignored, and more than 1,000 dentists left the NHS.
This NHS dental crisis has been a devastating slow-motion car crash of the Government’s own making, yet year after year, Minister after Minister, they have assured me of their commitment to reform. Last year, when I pressed the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), for action on this matter, she informed me that she had started work on a dental contract reform. However, just yesterday, we became aware that after 13 years in power, the Government are once again starting with an announcement of a plan to publish a new plan to improve access to NHS dentistry—a plan for a plan.
We would all welcome further clarification on what that plan might involve. I can only hope that sustained campaigning on this issue by me and other Members will mean that the plan will result in positive change for my Bradford South constituents.
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this excellent and incredibly important debate. In Newcastle, where NHS dentistry access has become almost impossible for so many of my constituents, a whole generation of young people and children are growing up without access to an NHS dentist. Does she agree that that is causing immense suffering now and storing up not only pain and suffering but additional costs for the future?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I will specifically cover access to NHS dentistry for children later in my remarks.
On the Government’s plan for a plan, experience suggests that positive change for my constituents may well be wishful thinking. My constituents are suffering and take no solace whatever from the Government’s commitment to plan for a plan for reform. The contract has been in place since 2006, and the Government have been undertaking a review of the process since 2011. After 12 years, it is still a work in progress.
The British Dental Association has shown that over half of dentists have reduced their NHS work since the start of the pandemic. Official workforce data counts people, not how much NHS work they do compared with private work. Does she agree that it is important that the Government collect that data?
I absolutely agree with the hon. Member’s important remarks. Collection of data is paramount for solving the issue.
The dodging of responsibility for more than 12 years is nothing short of a disgrace. Now, we all bear witness to the human consequences of this crisis. The victims of Government negligence are—as they almost always have been—the most vulnerable people in our society. In Bradford, 98% of dentists are now closed to NHS patients. As I informed the Prime Minister just last month, 80% of practices are now refusing to accept children as new NHS patients.
The lack of access is having crushing consequences. In the financial year of 2021-22, 42,000 NHS hospital tooth extractions were carried out for 0 to 19-year-olds—an 83% rise on the previous financial year. A dental nurse has recently spoken of routinely extracting up to 10 teeth from a single child, so children are routinely losing half their teeth. This dental crisis is now ultimately a crisis of inequality. The rate of tooth extraction is more than three times higher in Yorkshire and the Humber than in the south-east of England. Children living in our country’s most deprived communities face an extraction rate three and a half times greater than those living in the most affluent areas.
In care homes for the elderly, the access crisis has been just as devastating. In 2019, 6% of care homes reported that they were unable to access NHS dental care services, but by 2022, that figure had risen more than four times to 25%—a quarter of all care homes.
As this Conservative Government continue to mull over minor reforms, they fail entire generations of people, who deserve a reasonable standard of care. No more are the cradle-to-grave principles of the NHS.
A 21st-century Britain requires a 21st-century approach. We need more than mere revision of the contract. My right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the Opposition has spoken of the need for a new healthcare system that is just as much about prevention as about cure. It is a concrete fact that no dental treatment is stronger than protecting a healthy and original tooth, but in 2021-22 tooth decay was again the most common reason for hospital admission of children between six and 10 years old. For zero to 19-year-olds, hospital tooth extractions cost our NHS a shocking £81 million a year. In 2022, instead of children visiting the dentist on a regular basis, it cost our NHS an average of more than £700 for a single minor extraction of a child’s tooth in hospital.
It is a pleasure to follow the opening speech of the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins), who has brought back many happy memories of our time together when I was public health Minister. She has been consistent on this issue over many years.
Today’s debate is timely; it comes in a week when the Health and Social Care Committee, which, as you rightly say, I am privileged to chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, held a crucial oral evidence session with the Minister, who is in his place on the Front Bench.
Dentistry is a subject close to my heart from my time serving as public health Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care. It is also one of the Select Committee’s top priorities. We launched our inquiry on the subject shortly after I became Chair in November last year. We are looking at what steps the Government and NHS England should take to improve access to NHS dental services, and at further reform of the NHS dental contract. Rarely has an inquiry been more needed or welcome. It is clear that there are huge problems facing NHS dentistry. I am sure that every colleague, whether in the Chamber today or not, is familiar with stories of constituents having trouble accessing NHS dentistry. I am no exception to that, as a constituency MP; neither are my family, as patients.
One of the many submissions that the Committee received talked about people extracting their own teeth with pliers, something that should not happen in the 21st century. The problem is particularly acute in some areas of the country—we will hear talk today about dental deserts, I am sure—and among some groups of people, but challenges and capacity issues are experienced across the board. Our inquiry received a wide range of written evidence, including from nearly 30 local Healthwatch groups. We also held two detailed oral evidence sessions examining the problem and, of course, potential solutions. We heard from Healthwatch that the majority of complaints that it receives at the moment are about dentistry. Day in, day out, local Healthwatch groups receive emails and calls about problems accessing an NHS dentist. That is reflected in other evidence that we received; I know it is not easy for some to hear this, but as a Select Committee Chair, I can only follow the evidence that I receive. We have also heard again and again about the challenge of recruiting and retaining NHS dentists.
Order. I do not intend to put a time limit on the debate at this stage. Colleagues will have noticed that the Chairman of the Select Committee was commendably brief; if everyone emulates that, it should be possible for everybody to have their say without putting a time limit on. However, there is another debate that it is intended should follow this, and I hope that that will have a hearing as well.
Sadly we have been here before, time and again, and this Conservative Government still refuse to act, consigning yet another public service to the scrapheap. Once again my constituents are paying more and getting less under this Tory Government. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing this very important debate. We need this crisis to be urgently addressed.
It cannot be denied any longer: we face an existential crisis in NHS dentistry. It really is at breaking point. The latest area in my constituency to be affected is Pennywell in Sunderland, where the Bupa branch will close its doors in June, affecting 7,800 NHS patients. Not a week goes by without correspondence from a constituent in dire need, in despair and often in acute pain, unable to find an NHS dentist and unable to afford a private one. The nearest NHS practice accepting new patients for those constituents is in South Shields, nearly an hour away from Pennywell on public transport. That is completely unacceptable.
We cannot accept dental care becoming a luxury available only to those who can afford it. To add insult to injury, during this Conservative cost of living crisis the Government have hiked dental care prices by 8.5%. Those choices are being made by the Prime Minister and his billionaire buddies, who have never had to worry about the cost of anything such as this and do not understand the effect that that record increase will have on the cost of living pressures facing ordinary people in my constituency and across the north-east. The hike will not put a penny into NHS dentistry, either; it will just force millions to reconsider whether they can afford necessary dental treatment. We risk the horror of DIY dentistry becoming the norm.
Across 13 years, the Conservatives have chosen millions of pounds of short-term cuts, but the long-term cost of health inequalities is a price my constituents will pay for generations. The Government chose not to listen to dentists and they knew that the woefully inadequate NHS dentistry contract was not fit for purpose. That is not a new problem. Make no mistake, not only are the Conservatives allowing this crisis to worsen, but their inaction suggests to me that this is actually the result they desire.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate. It is the third in a trilogy that the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and I have secured, and that in itself tells a sad and sorry story. Complaints about access to NHS dentistry have been the No. 1 item in my inbox for getting on for two years and, while there is a particular challenge in Suffolk and Norfolk, I am conscious that this is very much a national crisis.
The fundamental causes of the collapse of NHS dentistry go back over 25 years, with a gradual withdrawal of funding by successive Governments and the poorly thought-through 2006 NHS contract. Covid was the final straw that brought the edifice crashing down. The challenge now in front of us is to put NHS dentistry on a secured long-term footing, but in a way that enables our constituents, many of whom are in acute agony, to see a dentist straight away.
I thank my hon. Friend for his part in securing successive debates. On emergency dentistry, in my constituency people are asked to travel an hour and a half by public transport for emergency treatment. Great changes have happened in the last three months, but we must improve on that in the next three months so that that no longer happens.
I think we all have tales of constituents who have had to go a long way to see an NHS dentist, if they can find one at all. In Lowestoft, people have had to travel to Basildon, which is not straightforward by public transport.
The task of delivering the plan for NHS dentistry is on the shoulders of the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien). From my perspective, the purpose of the debate is to be constructive and to provide him with ideas and suggestions that could be included in his plan. It should be ambitious, visionary and innovative, not just a sticking plaster to get us through the immediate crisis.
To achieve that, and to ensure that our constituents are able to see a truly local NHS dentist quickly, three immediate short-term challenges need to be addressed. First, the up to £500 million due to be clawed back into the main NHS budget should remain available exclusively for NHS dentistry this year. Secondly in the short term, there is a need to recruit more dentists from overseas to address the acute shortage of NHS dentists. I acknowledge the measures that the Government put in place, as the Minister set out in his answer to my question on Tuesday, but more needs to be done to eliminate the queue as quickly as possible. Thirdly in the short term, the 2006 NHS contract needs replacing, and we must move completely away from the discredited UDA system.
In the longer term, the ingredients for rebuilding NHS dentistry and transforming it into a system fit for the 21st century of which we can justifiably be proud, are as follows: first, as I mentioned, we need to put in place that new contract, and address the current contract’s fatal flaw. It should facilitate a focus on prevention and should motivate dentists and dental practitioners to work in rural and coastal areas such as Suffolk and Norfolk. Secondly, a long-term fair funding system should be put in place. I acknowledge that Governments do not like ringfencing, but NHS dentistry must be provided with an assurance that the funds are available to make the long-term strategic investment that ensures that service will be both resilient and robust.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins) and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on their persistence. Let us hope it starts to pay off and they do not need that fourth debate on the subject.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford South has said, NHS dentistry is in crisis. There is a recruitment and retention crisis, which the Government have allowed to develop and grow to the point that many of my constituents in Hull North have been left with no access to an NHS dentist. We all know what needs to be done to fix the problem, but the Government have continued to drag their feet over the need for a new dental contract, for new dental schools and for expanding the number of dentists that we have in this country. It is almost like they have hoped that those who can afford to do so will go private, and those who cannot will just sit and let their teeth rot.
Right now, people in Hull North are paying for the Government’s time wasting with their dental health. One constituent has told me of waiting lists at a local NHS dentist of more than 1,500 people, and another has tried to call every NHS dentist within 30 miles, but the earliest appointment they have available is January 2025. A concerned parent tells me that their 11-year-old has not seen a dentist since they were six years of age, and their four-year-old has never seen a dentist, despite being on several waiting lists across Hull since they were a baby. I have had headteachers tell me that children do not go to school because of dental pain and being unable to get access to a dentist.
In Yorkshire and the Humber, as my hon. Friend referred to, in the year ending 2022, 4,560 children under the age of 10 were hospitalised for tooth extractions. That shocking figure includes more than 1,500 babies and toddlers under five with cavities so bad that they have had to have their teeth removed. The situation is shocking and considerably worse in Yorkshire, the Humber and the north-east than elsewhere in England.
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We are paying for the cost of catch-up with our failure to prevent tooth decay, so prevention should be at the heart of our Government’s agenda for dental reform. We owe that to the generations of people currently being let down by the system. This country once had a strong school dental service. With the current shocking rates of tooth decay among children, now is the time to resurrect that policy as an interim prevention measure. It is not only the right thing to do but a sensible option for the country’s finances. Care homes would benefit from a dental contract that commissions stronger community dental services, as used to happen.
By using integrated care systems, upskilling care workers, and further involving local authorities, access can be increased and the pressure on dental services reduced. Prevention really is better than cure. We have a duty to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent effectively in areas right across the country. A decade of savage cuts by the Tory Government has left long-term damage. An estimated £880 million a year is now required just to restore to 2010 levels of resources. There will be no escaping the need for more investment, but it must be thoughtful investment. One answer could be the introduction of a prevention-focused capitation-type system, where lump sums are provided to NHS dental teams to treat sections of the population.
Successful targeted investment is possible, and in 2017 I developed a project in Bradford with the former Health Minister, the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine). I thank the hon. Member, who is now the Chair of the Health and Social Care Committee and who is present in the Chamber. He worked with me on the pilot scheme, which invested over £250,000 of unused clawback over three years into my constituency of Bradford South. That went straight back into local services and ensured that patients were able to access roughly 3,000 new NHS dental appointments in an area with high dental deprivation—targeting extra resources straight into an area where they were needed.
Although that was never meant to be a long-term solution, it proved that targeted investment is possible. Where there is a will, there is a way. With a staggering 10% of this year’s £3 billion national budget for NHS dentistry set to be returned, the system is clearly broken. Taxpayers’ money is returned not because people are not desperate for NHS dentists, but because the Government continue to push an underfunded and unworkable system. They lack the will to act and to find a way forward to protect dental health in this country. Now is the time to put “national” back into NHS dentistry.
The Government may once again list the challenges that stand in the way of re-establishing a truly universal dental care system. We are in a time of extraordinary change, with unprecedented cost of living crises, war on the European continent, and a society impacted by a deadly virus. Our health system is undoubtedly challenged, but 80 years ago the Conservative-Labour coalition Government published a guiding principle of NHS dental reform, just as this country fought for its very freedom and independence. In Sir William Beveridge’s own words:
“A revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.”
It is time for real change, not empty promises. This is the time for a Government dedicated to acting in the public good, to revitalise and resurrect NHS dentistry once again, ending the shoddy record of this Government’s patching of our NHS dental services.
The Government have, I am pleased to say, started to act, and to pick up where some of the previous tinkering reforms left off—reforms for which I take some of the credit, and some of the responsibility; I did not fundamentally reform the dental contract during my time as dental Minister, either. In July last year, the Government announced several changes to the 2006 dental contract, including a change to the way that units of dental activity are awarded. They also advised longer recall intervals for adults with good oral health, in line with National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.
In our first evidence session, we heard from Shawn Charlwood from the British Dental Association, who told us that the reforms to the dental contract represented tweaks, rather than the fundamental reform that is needed. He said:
“In essence, what we are doing at the moment is rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic while the service slowly slips into the sea.”
To be fair to the Minister, for whom I have a lot of respect, and who spoke really well before the Select Committee earlier this week, I was delighted to hear him acknowledge in that session that he wants “quite fundamental reform” to the dental contract; that has to be right. He argued that the existing reforms were “welcomed”, but noted that they were “only a start”. That was good to hear, and it was well covered by the media on Tuesday evening. I worry, though, that even if significant reforms to the NHS dental contract were made tomorrow, it would be too late, or an extreme challenge, to bring back those dentists who have already left the NHS dental workforce. It is really hard for people to make that decision; they came into dentistry to work in public service. I fear that once they have made the change, it will be final for them, and it will be very difficult to get them to change their mind. I touched on that with the Minister earlier this week. Perhaps he can tell us a bit more about what he will do to address that issue of return.
In our session, I asked the Minister about his ambition for NHS dentistry. Tony Blair famously said in his 1999 conference speech that his ambition was for everybody to have access to an NHS dentist within two years. It never happened, but it was a clear ambition; I give him credit for that. The Minister said that “the No. 1 thing” on his mind was improving access to a dentist for those who do not currently have that access—quite right. But when I pressed him on whether that meant that everyone would have access to an NHS dentist, he said that he wanted everyone who needed an NHS dentist to be able to access one. That is welcome; it is a repeat of that ambition. It is good that the Government have that ambition—although the key, obviously, is whether and when they deliver on it. I will ask him to expand on that when he sums up.
The Minister also talked about making NHS dentistry more attractive to dentists, which is clearly crucial. He said that the problem is not a shortage of dentists per se, but a shortage of dentists undertaking NHS dentistry. The figures certainly bear that out. Our work has highlighted the point that there is a problem with data as well. There are headcounts for the number of NHS dentists, but we do not know whether they are part-time or full-time and how much NHS activity they do. That gap needs closing.
We need to know about the workforce available to deliver the Minister’s ambition; until then, it is unlikely to be achieved. The Minister reminded us this week that the Government are in the final throes of drawing up their workforce plan, which I understand will include dentistry. That is good. I hope that that plan will be published in the not-too-distant future—maybe once we get past a certain electoral event next Thursday.
I also want to touch on overseas recruitment. According to the General Dental Council, almost a quarter of dentists registered in the UK gained their dentistry qualifications overseas. That is fine, but for those dentists the primary means of assessment is the overseas registration examination, or ORE. The pandemic created a backlog in the number of overseas dentists waiting to take their exams—that is the good part. The ORE is subject to practical and legal constraints that make it difficult to adapt capacity to meet changing demands for places. A recent list of changes should help ease the problems, but are unlikely to make a significant difference in the short term; the Minister can correct me if I am wrong.
One of my constituents, Christopher Hilling of SpaDental Group, who has spoken to me about the subject on several occasions, has outlined the difficulties he is facing. He has a number of dentists waiting for the opportunity to sit the ORE exam, but he has struggled in the past to get accurate information about when the exams will even take place. He is concerned that he might lose more of his overseas dentists due to a lack of exam opportunities and of General Dental Council communication about when those dentists might be able to practise in the UK. Given the delay in the taking effect of changes to overseas registration, what are the Government doing to support the GDC, especially with regard to clearing the backlog of applications?
I was encouraged to hear this week the Minister and chief dental officer Sara Hurley talk in our evidence session about the importance of driving forward work on prevention. That is a passion of mine, and colleagues will know that it is a major inquiry that the Select Committee is undertaking. One of our witnesses at this week’s session talked about the importance of early prevention work, focusing on young children. The expression she used was “getting gums on seats”, and that is a great place to focus. We must get more gums on seats, Mr Deputy Speaker—that is the catchphrase for today’s debate.
Finally, I want to talk about integrated care systems, on which the Select Committee has also done a lot of work. We heard in our session about some of the changes that have come into effect as a result of integrated care boards taking responsibility for commissioning dental services. Some were early adopters, including the Hampshire and Isle of Wight ICB that looks after my constituency. But the boards do not include dentistry. I asked the Hampshire ICB representative, who appeared as one of our witnesses this week, about that. They said that they do not want to make their boards too big. I find that disappointing, surprising and unhelpful. To be fair, some ICBs have managed to include dentistry on their boards without any problems; if they can do it, all should. It sends a strange message to the dental profession if it is not included on integrated care boards. It is a great opportunity for flexibility in commissioning, which is why we created the boards. Dentistry needs to be within them.
To conclude, the picture is bleak, but it does not have to be—it is also improving and there are grounds for optimism. We have a Minister who understands this subject inside out and is committed to providing access to NHS dentists for everyone who needs it and a thorough overhaul of the current system and the contract, as he confirmed to us this week. In integrated care boards, we have the possibility of being able to target local services to local needs. But the time for action is running out. I hope the Minister can outline in his response to the debate that he recognises the urgency of the situation, and that, when my Committee produces its report on dentistry, he will read it and act promptly on our recommendations.
My constituents are furious, as am I. They are either forced to pay over £100 more for the exact same NHS care they could get under a Labour Government in Wales or they are left unable to access any treatment at all. We need a Labour Government who will prioritise healthcare access for all, clear up 13 years of Tory underfunding and mismanagement, and abolish the Prime Minister’s precious non-dom status in order to provide the treatment and dental care that the British people deserve. The people of Sunderland and Washington should not have to suffer because of Tory chaos and managed decline that leave dental care a luxury for the few.
Thirdly, the recruitment and retention arrangements need to be significantly improved. Dentistry must feature prominently in the Government’s forthcoming NHS and social care workforce plan. Many colleagues, including myself, have highlighted the need for dentistry schools in their areas. Locally, both the University of East Anglia and the University of Suffolk have come forward with proposals. In East Anglia, my sense is that a vacuum must be filled, but I am mindful that a strategic approach right across the country needs to be pursued on where dentistry schools are best located. I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister could commit to carrying out such an assessment. In the meantime, I urge him to immediately support the University of Suffolk’s dental community interest company, which has the twin benefits of providing much needed NHS dental treatments and training in such areas as dental therapy and hygiene.
There is also a need to improve the accountability and transparency of NHS dentistry. The move to integrated care boards that happened throughout much of the country on 1 April, including locally with the Norfolk and Waveney integrated care board, is very much a step in the right direction. In our local area it is taking steps to put in place a long-term plan and to ensure proper representation from dentists.
Finally, at the heart of any health strategy must be prevention. Such an approach will help spare people from hours of agony and ultimately impose less of a burden on the public purse. I will briefly outline three possible strands to intervention. First, the Government must press ahead with plans to fluoridate the water supply. All the evidence is that that will bring significant results. Secondly, we must come up with a strategy for promoting better oral healthcare for children. In 2021, with support from local councillors, Lowestoft Rising provided free toothbrushes and toothpaste to the under-sevens. The take-up was high and the feedback was extremely positive, and it recommended that such products should be exempted from VAT. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to promote that policy with the Treasury. Thirdly, as we have heard, we must not forget the elderly, particularly those in care homes, and that must be covered in the new dental contract.
In conclusion, the emergence of dental deserts across the country, which are now joining up to create an area of Saharan proportions, is a crisis that must be tackled head-on with proper funding, root-and-branch reform and bold and imaginative policies. My sense and my hope is that the Minister is up for the challenge, and I look forward to the publication of the Government’s NHS dentistry plan. As I have said, this is the third Backbench Business Committee debate that the hon. Member for Bradford South and I have secured, and I hope that a fourth will not be necessary.
What we need are more NHS dentists. We need to recruit more NHS dentists, and if we want to tackle the dental recruitment problems, we obviously need to train more NHS dentists. Years ago, the University of Hull, in partnership with the University of York—I am very pleased to see in her place my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), who represents that university—put in a joint bid for a dental school.
It was to go alongside the brilliant Hull York Medical School, which had been established under the Labour Government when there was a real need for more doctors to be trained. The idea was that we would “grow” our own doctors from the area where the medical school was based. Let us imagine what would have happened and the situation we would be in today if we had been allowed to have that Hull York dental school.
After all the dither and delay that we have been talking about, we can correct our course today. There is plenty of existing support and the capability to deliver a high-quality training facility in the Humber area, which could directly serve one of the worst affected regions in the country, but we need the Government to step up to give us the resources and provide the funding for places.
I am, however, grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), for agreeing to meet me after I raised this issue in Tuesday’s Health questions. I also commend him for the speed with which his office contacted mine to arrange that meeting. Getting a ministerial meeting that quickly is unusual these days, so I thank him for that. A Hull dental school could be part of a long-promised workforce plan for the NHS. It could mean that we have sufficient UK-trained, highly qualified dentists and, with the necessary changes to the dental contract, a decent reward for their hard work. We also need to remember that we are competing in a global market for dentists. I was struck by the fact that if a dentist goes to Canada, they receive a £63,000 golden hello and the offer of residence. That is clearly tempting for many dentists who train in this country and feel they are overworked and get too little pay.
To date, the Government have been missing in action, dentists have been voting with their feet and patients in Hull have been paying with their teeth. We need more NHS dentists. Let us train them. Let us get on with it and do it now, and let us do it in Hull.