Shadow Minister to tell dentists “the cavalry is coming” with Labour
Today (17-05-24) Preet Kaur Gill, Labour’s Shadow Primary Care and Public Health Minister, will present Labour’s plan to rescue and reform NHS dentistry at the UK’s largest dentistry conference. The shadow minister will speak at 12pm.
The British Dental Conference and Dentistry Show is taking place at the Birmingham NEC, with a few thousand dentists set to attend. Eddie Crouch, British Dental Association Chair, will also speak after Gill.
The theme of the session is ‘NHS dentistry in election year’. Preet Kaur Gill will lay out Labour’s plan to rescue NHS dentistry from its immediate crisis and let dentists know “the cavalry is coming” to deliver wider reform to the outdated dental contract.
Preet Kaur Gill is expected to tell dentists that the "future of NHS dentistry will be on the ballot paper" at the next election, and that access to a dentist is “just as integral as your access to a GP.”
She will reference having met patients who’ve had to wait three years to get seen, by which time half their teeth had rotted beyond repair, cancer patients whose treatment has been delayed because they couldn’t get an appointment when they needed one and children in local schools who are too self-conscious to smile.
The event comes as the latest NHS statistics show that nearly 400,000 fewer children were seen by a dentist within the last 12 months in England, compared to 5 years before, and over 4 million fewer adults were seen in the last two years compared to 5 years ago – a 19% decrease.i
Across the country 8 in 10 dental practices are not taking on new NHS patients, and in some areas, 99% of practices have shut their doors. Many people have also resorted to pulling their teeth out with pliers after being unable to access a dentist's appointment, with 1 in 10 people having attempted so-called DIY dentistry. Tooth decay is also the number 1 reason young children end up in hospital.
Preet Kaur Gill will set out Labour’s rescue plan to fund 700,000 extra urgent appointments each and every year, introduce a targeted recruitment scheme to encourage hundreds of new dentists to left behind areas with a £20,000 incentive, and introduce a supervised toothbrushing scheme in schools.
The rescue plan is fully funded, with new money found from clamping down on tax dodgers and closing non-dom tax loopholes.
Preet Kaur Gill will also outline Labour’s commitment to ensuring that the NHS is and can be somewhere where dentists build their career.
She is expected to say, “I’ve seen how difficult it has been for dentists in the past few years. You struggled through the pandemic, when infection control policies made it almost impossible for you to hit your UDA targets. And I’ve seen the exodus of dentists to the private sector.”
Labour has committed to reforming the outdated dental contract to shift the focus to prevention, retain NHS dentists and ensure NHS dentistry is there for all who need it.
Preet Kaur Gill, Shadow Minister for Primary Care and Public Health, said:
“The Conservatives have left NHS dentistry to rot. Lack of access to NHS dentistry has serious consequences for patients, and rotting teeth is now the number one reason that young children are admitted to hospital.
“NHS dentistry won’t survive five more years of Tories. Labour has a plan to rescue our NHS and reform the service so that it’s fit for the future.”
Eddie Crouch, Chair of the British Dental Association, said:
“It’s heartening to see a firm commitment to fix this broken service.
“This really shouldn’t be a partisan issue. Millions need NHS dentistry to have a future, and that requires real reform, not the tweaks at the margins we’ve seen from Government.”
ENDS
Notes:
i NHSBSA English Contractor Monthly General Dental Activity data for February 2024 and February 2019: https://opendata.nhsbsa.net/dataset/english-contractor-monthly-general-dental-activity
Preet Kaur Gill’s speech on Labour’s plan for NHS dentistry
***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***
Thank you,
It’s an enormous pleasure for me to be here at this year’s British Dental Conference and Dentistry Show, here in Birmingham, in my own backyard.
It’s already been a great day, and I’ve been delighted to meet several dentists from Birmingham this morning.
I just want to start by expressing my gratitude for the important work you do.
The question posed by this session is “What is the future for the dentistry profession, in this, an election year?”
Conference, the future of NHS dentistry will be on the ballot paper at the General Election this year.
Today, we face nothing short of a “widespread crisis,” what the Nuffield Trust describes as having brought NHS dentistry to its “most perilous point in its 75 year history.”
Across the country 8 in 10 dental practices are not taking on new NHS patients.
In some areas, 99% of practices have shut their doors, creating “dental deserts” where no practices are open to new patients.
I expect most of us saw on our TV screens in February when a new Practice opened in Bristol and desperate patients were literally queueing around the block to see an NHS dentist.
The police were even called in to manage the crowd.
It was a shocking image, reminiscent of the Tory attack adverts from the 1970s.
But it is 2024 and it is a Conservative government in office now, and it is people trying to simply get a dentists appointment.
The consequences for patients as we all know, are bleak.
Children in their thousands wind up in hospital just to have teeth removed.
1 in 10 people have attempted DIY dentistry.
No one should be forced to pull out their own teeth with pliers in 21st century Britain.
Yet that is where we are under the Tories.
It is two years ago now, that the Prime Minister promised to “restore” NHS dentistry…
Promising that Integrated Care Boards would be able to reinvest clawback from undelivered UDAs into frontline services in new ways.
But what have we seen instead?
Directives to ICBs to take back the money promised for dentistry to plug other holes instead.
Then a dental recovery plan not worthy of the name, with no new funding attached.
And still no serious reform to the outdated dental contract, that the Tories have left almost untouched for 14 years.
But I am not here today to simply state how bad it is.
You can read the headlines behind me.
And you know that from your experience supporting your patients, day in, day out, what this crisis means.
I am here to tell you how I want things to change.
Because dentistry isn’t just an optional extra to the rest of the NHS.
It isn’t a luxury service, to be attended to last, once all the other problems in our health service have been solved.
Oral health matters.
And access to an NHS dentist is just as integral to the central promise of the NHS – a universal service that is there for everyone who needs it – as anything else.
Since I took on this brief last September, I have met with dozens of patients from all around the country, who have told me what the dentistry crisis has meant for them.
At Edgbaston Dental Centre in my constituency, I met a man who’d had to wait three years to get seen, by which time half his teeth had rotted beyond repair.
I’ve met cancer patients whose treatment has been delayed because they can’t get an appointment when they need one.
I’ve met children in local schools who are too self-conscious to smile.
That is what NHS dentistry means for the people who rely on it.
And that is why we can never tolerate a two-tier service, where a privileged few get the care they need while the rest go without.
That is why we need to recognise access to a dentist is just as integral as your access to a GP.
When we hear stories of patients dying from sepsis contracted from an untreated infection in their gums…
Or see that a thousand more people a year are dying from oral cancer than they were in 2010…
So our first absolute priority, has to be to get the service back on its feet.
That is why the Labour Party has set out our dentistry rescue plan to grip the immediate crisis:
funding 700,000 extra urgent appointments each and every year;
and introducing a targeted recruitment scheme to encourage hundreds of new dentists to left behind areas with a £20,000 incentive.
Unlike the Government’s proposals, our plan isn’t just to raid existing budgets.
It’s fully funded, with new money found by clamping down on tax dodgers and closing non-dom tax loopholes.
But the other change we want to make is the shift to prevention.
Keir Starmer spoke about it yesterday, in his speech launching Labour’s first steps for change.
He spoke about visiting Alder Hey children’s hospital in Liverpool, and seeing the miraculous work that the NHS team do there to save the lives of young children, even conducting heart operations on children aged 0-2.
And he said just how appalled he was to find out that the single biggest cause of children going into that hospital between the ages of 6-10 is to have their rotting teeth taken out. Literally more children going to that hospital to have their teeth taken out because they’re decaying than any other operation.
That NHS team having to spend their time, their expertise, taking rotting teeth out, when it could have been prevented.
It is a textbook example of this Government’s sticking plaster politics when it comes to the NHS.
And it’s why through Labour’s Child Health Action Plan, that will change – tackling the causes of ill health sooner, promoting healthy habits earlier, and making sure children get the best start in life.
For the dentists in the room from the West Midlands, you will know this too well – the sheer scale of preventable issues faced by children in our most deprived communities.
When the Government’s own oral health survey finds thousands of primary school children suffering through dental pain that is so bad that they are struggling to eat.
Something is seriously wrong.
So it is why Labour will also take on this problem at its root, and roll out a national supervised toothbrushing scheme for 3-5 year olds, targeting the most deprived 20% of children – to stop more children winding up in hospital just to get their teeth taken out.
Finally, the most important shift we need to make, is to ensure that the NHS is and can be somewhere where dentists build their career.
I’ve seen how difficult it has been for dentists in the past few years.
You struggled through the pandemic, when infection control policies made it almost impossible for you to hit your UDA targets.
And I’ve seen the exodus of dentists to the private sector.
It makes me fearful for the future, if we go on like this.
A few months ago, I was lucky to be able to visit the Birmingham dental school, with Eddie, to meet the young people training there.
I was so impressed by them. Their dedication, professionalism, and enthusiasm for the profession was plain to see.
But I was also shocked: by their pessimism that the NHS could be somewhere to build their career.
And I will not accept that.
With Labour, the NHS will always be a universal service, there for us when we need it.
But there is no NHS dentistry without you, the dentists.
So that is why the next Labour government will get straight to work on reform of the outdated dental contract that the Tories have left almost untouched for 14 years.
We know that the current system has to change.
It is absurd, when millions of people cannot get an appointment, that hundreds of millions of pounds is being clawed back from frontline dentists who can’t deliver on their targets.
It is scandalous that dedicated NHS dentists feel they are being pushed out to the private sector, simply to make ends meet.
I know how passionately the people of this country believe in the NHS.
I don’t believe for a second that the crisis in NHS dentistry is a result of dentists simply choosing to turn their back on their communities.
But I know it isn’t easy.
So I want to send a message to the profession today: that with Labour, the cavalry is coming.
We will grasp this issue together.
We will reform the contract, to shift the focus to prevention, retain NHS dentists and ensure NHS dentistry is there for all of us who need it.
And make no mistake, it will not take us 14 years to get to work. We want to sit down with Eddie and start talks on this as soon as possible if we win the general election…
And yes, I will expect him to hold me to account just as fiercely as he has this Government!
So as we look forward to the General Election, that is the choice.
Another five years of broken promises and decline, or Labour’s plan to rescue NHS dentistry.
Once again, let me thank Eddie and the BDA for inviting me here today, and for all the work that they do on behalf of their members.
Together, let us rebuild NHS dentistry so it is fit for the future.
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