Access to NHS Dental Services
1/110. What steps he is taking to improve access to NHS dental services.
We are improving access to NHS dentistry with reforms to prioritise those in greatest need and by creating an urgent care safety net throughout the country. I am proud to say that we are on track to deliver 2.5 million additional treatments and that survey data released last week shows that 81% of patients in the last two years were able to get an appointment, but we will go further with fundamental reform in this Parliament.
I thank the Minister for that answer. In the area that I represent, we have a problem. NHS dental practices in Shildon and in Bishop Auckland closed in the year before the general election, and recently another practice in West Auckland has been writing to patients to say that it cannot provide NHS care. While I respect and really appreciate the work the Government have done on emergency dental treatments, for primary care dentistry it is still simply not good enough. I know that the Minister knows that as we have talked about it. Will he commit to continuing reform of the contract at pace and recognise that we need to better fund NHS dentistry? Will he or his officials meet me to discuss what we can do to help the affected patients in my constituency?
My hon. Friend is a tireless advocate for his constituents. Integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning NHS dental services to meet the needs of their local population. Where a dental practice decides to close, NHS England and the relevant ICB work together to ensure that its patients have access to dental care. However, I absolutely accept his point that we still have a long way to go to get NHS dentistry back on its feet. I would be more than happy to meet him to discuss that further.
The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) is right about dentistry. We have had no clarity from the Minister as to the vision for the future. What should people expect? Is it the plan that most people should go private and not be able to access NHS dentistry? When I chaired a Holderness Health meeting on Friday, the ICB told me that just 39% of people were able to access NHS dentistry within two years. That is the reality for people in rural Beverley and Holderness today. What we would like to hear from the Minister is the vision for the future. What can we expect by 2029-30? Right now, all we get is words and no real clarity.
I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but I have to say it is a bit rich to be given lectures from the Conservative party, which had 14 years to fix NHS dentistry and did absolutely nothing about it. Our ambition remains to deliver fundamental reform before the end of this Parliament. It is a complex issue—there are various contract models involving capitation, blended capitation and care packages—and we need time to get it right for both dentists and patients, but I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we are working on it and the public consultation will be launched soon.