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NHS Dentistry

Imagine being 81 years old, blind and waking up with a terrible toothache, and then imagine having no car and no local dentist to turn to. This was the reality for John, one of my constituents in Scarborough and Whitby. His story is unfolding at a time when we are seeing a much-needed and welcome shift in how our country tackles dental care. After years of the system being left to decay, we are finally seeing real funding, new incentives to recruit dentists and a genuine, sincere effort to rescue NHS dentistry. Last year, this Labour Government invested around £3.7 billion on primary care dentistry. We are starting to make a real difference to people’s lives. Take another of my constituents, Margaret. She was so grateful for the recent changes that she sat down and wrote a letter to the Minister for Care. After suffering from a debilitating toothache, which had threatened to leave her housebound, the Government’s new emergency appointments meant that she could get her tooth extracted at short notice.

The true test of our reforms is whether they reach everyone, and Margaret’s story shows that they have not. The reason that Margaret needed that emergency help was that her regular NHS dentist went private. Last week, I called 13 dental practices in my constituency. Only one, in Whitby, is taking on adults on the NHS, but only those with a Whitby postcode, and no dental practice in Scarborough is taking on adults under the NHS. Because John could not find an NHS dentist in Scarborough, he had to go private for an emergency extraction and was hit with a £280 bill. That is not just an exorbitant fee; it is a breaking point. If someone is blind and cannot drive, an emergency appointment in a nearby town is not much use.

We cannot judge success on national averages while people in coastal communities such as Scarborough and Whitby feel stranded. In Scarborough, we have seen practice after practice going 100% private and handing back their NHS contracts. Two constituents who moved to Scarborough were appalled to find that not a single dental practice was taking NHS patients.