Four in five (82.8%) dental practices in England are not registering adult NHS patients, while 71.1% are not taking on new patients under the age of 18.
According to the Guardian, these figures result from the analysis of 4,969 of England’s 7,000 dental practices by the Labour party.
The data was further broken down by region. More than 99% of practices in the south west were not accepting adult patients. A high proportion of practices were also not registering new patients in the north east (96.8%) and east Midlands (94.3%).
Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘The Conservatives have left NHS dentistry to wither on the vine, and now the service is barely worthy of the name. Patients are told to go without, or do it themselves, with DIY dentistry now shockingly common in Tory Britain.’
Labour has responded to the findings with the announcement of their dental recovery plan. This includes funding for 700,000 new urgent appointments, supervised brushing in schools and reform of the dental contract.
Labour also said it would introduce £20,000 ‘golden hellos’ for newly-qualified dentists willing to work in ‘dental deserts’.
Wes Streeting said that this funding would be recovered by abolishing the non-domicile tax status.
‘NHS dentistry in England is at its most perilous point’
These findings coincide with the release of a report on NHS dentistry by think tank Nuffield Trust. Bold action or slow decay? The state of NHS dentistry and future policy actions highlights issues such as the scarcity of funding and dental access in England.
The trust said that ‘NHS dentistry in England is at its most perilous point in its 75-year history’. It cited ‘a series of poor policy choices’ as the ‘deep roots’ of these problems.
Nuffield Trust chief executive Thea Stein responded to the announcement of Labour’s recovery plan. She said: ‘The Labour party are right to highlight the slow decay of NHS dentistry. Our own research suggests that NHS dentistry has likely gone for good, driven by decades of policy neglect and a drift to the private sector, which has not been resisted by successive governments of all colours.’
She went on to say that ‘the measures presented in the Labour plan all make good sense’. However, she also questioned whether these solutions would be enough to save NHS dentistry.
She added: ‘Even with these changes, it is likely that a future government will need to re-evaluate the offer for NHS care – either through a massive expansion costing billions, or through explicitly reducing it to a basic core service for all and free dental care for the most in need.
‘This will require political bravery and a willingness to face up to the fact that the dream of universal dentistry has been surpassed by the nightmare of dental deserts.’
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