Meeting of the Parliament 21 February 2024
I take this opportunity to welcome the new cabinet secretary to his place. It was remiss of me not to do so during the previous debate, but I do so now. I also congratulate the new member, Tim Eagle, on his excellent maiden speech.
The decline in NHS dentistry in Scotland under the SNP is, frankly, scandalous. The Government is driving NHS dental services into the ground. Oral health is consistently a second thought, and there are people across the country who are unable to sign up to a dentist and who are relying on emergency dental phone lines instead. In 2022, the number of NHS 24 calls about dental health exceeded 60,000, which was an increase of 40,000 compared to four years prior. That is not good enough. Scots should be able to access the care that they need in their local area and should not have to wait until a minor dental issue becomes an emergency to see a dentist.
Labour research shows that, in recent years, waits for dental surgery have soared. Each of the 14 territorial health boards has seen an increase in the average waiting time for dental surgery. In some parts of Scotland, people are waiting close to a year, in excruciating pain, for the surgery that they desperately need.
The Government’s failure to get to grips with NHS dentistry issues is—as is far too often the case—compounding health inequalities. In 2022, children and adults from the most deprived areas in Scotland were less likely to have seen their dentist compared to those in the least deprived areas. The gap between child participation rates in dental care was 20 percentage points between the most and least deprived, which is completely unacceptable. Shockingly, only 68 per cent of 10 to 11-year-olds in the 10 most deprived areas in Scotland are decay free compared to 90 per cent in the 10 least deprived areas. That is a stark contrast. Patients and dentists deserve better.
I can furnish members with a personal anecdote. For the past 20 years, I have been registered with an NHS dentist in one of the most deprived communities in Scotland—north Glasgow—and, for the first time in my life, from childhood to the present, I have been unable to get a routine check-up because the permanent dentist has left, locums continually fail to appear and dental appointments have routinely been cancelled. I have not been able to get a dental check-up for eight months, despite repeatedly attempting to book one. That is just one personal example.
In 2006, the last Labour-led Scottish Government introduced the world-leading and ambitious childsmile programme, which gives young people free toothbrushes and toothpaste as well as two fluoride varnishes a year. The programme has vastly improved prevention of the signs of tooth decay in primary school-aged children. Childsmile is an example of spending to save down the line and improving through-life costs. It is about prevention and is a good example of what the Government could do much more of. It was also a targeted intervention to close the oral health gap. That is why I mention it in my amendment. That foresight and long-termism is missing from the Scottish Government’s sticking-plaster approach to dentistry.
Last year, Labour members welcomed the news that the Scottish Government was in conversation with dentists regarding a new payment reform plan to ensure that dentists continue to offer NHS services in the light of swathes of dental practices turning away from NHS provision. Often, once they go, they will not come back in a hurry. However, what the Government offered fell short of the mark, and, as the British Dental Association has said,
“the fundamentals of a broken system remain”.
Dentists regularly tell me that they have witnessed a huge increase in the number of patients presenting with signs of DIY dentistry, and I am sure that they have said the same to ministers. We only have to look at the explosion of adverts for self-dental scaling kits that are available on social media as an indication of what is going on out there. A British Dental Association survey showed that 83 per cent of Scottish dentists have treated patients who performed DIY dentistry during lockdown. That is simply outrageous.
Significant change to the NHS recovery plan is needed to reverse the decline in NHS dentistry so that Scots have access to dental healthcare when and where they need it.
I move amendment S6M-12215.1, to insert at end:
“and recognises that the world-leading Childsmile programme, which was implemented by the last Scottish Labour Party-led administration in 2006, has been widely recognised as one of the most effective public health interventions of the devolved era and has transformed child dental health.”
Motions, questions or amendments mentioned by their reference code.