Sharon Hodgson MP: Labour is repairing NHS dentistry and making it fit and workable for the future

In recent years it has become really difficult to get an NHS dental appointment and it is scandalous that the number one reason that five to nine year-olds are admitted to hospital is because of tooth decay. This is completely unacceptable.

This issue came up repeatedly on the doorstep and colleagues also report the same trends.

That is why I am proud that the government has chosen to act and has announced in February that hundreds of thousands of people, including in Washington and Gateshead South, will soon be able to access urgent and emergency dental care as the government and NHS rolls out 700,000 extra urgent appointments, delivering on Labour’s manifesto commitment.

Of course our broken health service, which includes dentistry, cannot be fixed overnight and we need to be open, honest and realistic. At the same time, I am delighted that this Labour Government is taking such an important step not just in repairing NHS dentistry but actually making it fit and workable for the future.

I know that this matters to people in my constituency of Washington and Gateshead South and I understand just how vital and desperately needed this change is.

Patients who had tried to see an NHS dentist in the last two years reported being unable to do so, with access to NHS dentistry increasingly becoming a lottery across the country. I am therefore proud that we made a manifesto promise, and that we have delivered on that promise through our Plan for Change.

In the North East and North Cumbria ICB specifically, a huge 57,559 urgent care appointments are to be delivered.

After over a decade of failure, the Tories shockingly left millions of people in England with unmet needs for dentistry. They brought in a New Patient Premium scheme that didn’t have any impact for new patients, with figures recently revealing that £88 million was, in fact, wasted on the scheme.

We are not making the same mistake, far from it.

We have seen the mess the healthcare system was left in and we have rolled up our sleeves and taken the difficult decisions no other party would, in order to raise the money to sort the mess out.

The misery faced when people try to get urgent dental care is beginning to come to an end, thanks to this Labour Government.

We are rebuilding dentistry – focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients.

While this will take time, this policy marks an important step in paving the way to getting NHS dentistry firmly back on its feet – something I know my constituents will soon be feeling the benefit of.