Rishi Sunak has officially replaced Liz Truss as Prime Minister – but what does that mean for dentistry? Here’s everything we know so far…
Today saw Rishi Sunak officially replace Liz Truss as Prime Minister.
Liz stated that NHS dentistry would be a ‘top three’ priority in her first 90 days in office. However, her short time as Prime Minister saw a number of concerns for the dental profession.
In particular, her efforts to scrap the sugar tax attracted criticism across healthcare.
Many dental professionals found this to be a ‘serious error of judgement’ considering how many people are struggling to find an NHS dentist appointment.
In addition, her health secretary, Thérèse Coffey, was expected to U-turn on plans to tackle smoking in the UK.
When Thérèse was first appointed, she said: ‘Patients are my top priority, as we focus on ABCD – ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists.’
However, she failed to mention any new commitments to support the NHS dentistry crisis in her ‘Plan for Patients‘. As a result, over 60 MPs called on Liz Truss to honour her pledge to reform NHS dentistry.
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What has Rishi Sunak said about dentistry so far?
During their leadership battle in August, Rishi said considerably more about dentistry than Liz.
In particular, he promised to ‘restore NHS dentistry’ if he was made Prime Minister. But now that time has come, will he honour this pledge?
One of his plans included implementing an ‘early intervention’ programme involving checkups in primary schools.
In addition, he promised to ringfence funding to alleviate the pressure NHS dentistry is facing. Other plans included strengthening prevention and encouraging dentists to stay in the NHS.
When asked what he could do to fix the exodus of NHS dentists, he said that he understands the urgent need to fix the crisis dentistry is facing.
‘I have seven fillings and that’s because I drank an enormous amount of Coke when I was a youngster.
‘So, I feel your pain and we do need good dentistry. The NHS is everyone’s number one public service priority.’
‘I want to have great dentistry’
He also revealed that he would tackle missed NHS appointments in order to restore dentistry.
‘If we’re going to get to grips with this and make sure that there is money for NHS dentistry we just have to be bolder about reforming the NHS to get more efficiency out of it.’
‘Money’s not enough. We need to reform things so we can get more efficiency and invest in things like dentistry.
‘We have over ten million missed appointments every year and it’s not just GPs.’
He continued: ‘If people can cancel them in advance properly, we free up all that extra capacity and none of us have had to pay an extra penny in taxes to do that.’
He stated: ‘We believe in an NHS that’s free at the point of use, but its not free at the point of mis-use.
‘You can be compassionate the first time. But at the end of the day, if we all want to cut taxes in this country, if we want to find money to spend on dentistry, we have to be prepared to do things differently.’
He continued: ‘I want to have great healthcare. I want to have great dentistry for you and for my future fillings, but I do want to be able to cut taxes too.’
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