BDA on NHS dentistry: Little evidence Ministers are ready to honour pledges on reform
NewsPosted by: Dental Design 22nd September 2022
The British Dental Association has warned government needs to show real ambition to bring NHS dentistry back from the brink, given the absence of any new commitments in Therese Coffey’s ‘Plan for Patients’.
While the new Health Secretary restated her ‘ABCD’ priorities – ambulances, backlogs, care, doctors and dentists – she offered no new proposals to halt the exodus of dentists from the NHS or expand access to care to patients.
News comes as over 60 MPs from across Parliament – led by the Mother and Father of the House – have called on the PM to make good on her campaign pledges on NHS dentistry. During the recent leadership election Liz Truss stated that action on the access crisis would form a ‘top 3’ target in her first 90 days.
The discredited NHS contract dentists in England work to is fuelling the access crisis. It puts government targets ahead of patient care, and caps spending to cover barely half the population. Coffey’s speech, the BDA say, offered nothing new, simply revisiting minor ‘tweaks’ to the contract announced before summer recess, which do nothing to improve access, or halt the exodus of dentists from the NHS, and had no additional funding attached.
The BDA is pressing for a decisive break from this failed contract, underpinned by sustainable investment. It would take an extra £880m a year simply to restore resources to 2010 levels. It warns that government objectives to improve access and boost retention simply cannot be achieved within the financial constraints set by the Treasury.
Recent BBC research has revealed 9 in 10 practices are unable to take on new adult NHS patients. In Liz Truss’s constituency base of Norfolk that stands at 100%, and the same applies in Suffolk, home to Therese Coffey, the new Deputy PM and Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. In Surrey, home to new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, the figure stands at 93%.
BDA Chair Eddie Crouch said: “Today we saw little evidence government is ready to honour its pledges on NHS dentistry. This isn’t a partisan issue. Underfunding and failed contracts can be fixed, but we need real leadership across Whitehall. Millions of patients need these promises to be kept.”
