Meeting of the Parliament 08 February 2023
Wow. I think that I have turned up to the wrong debate. [Interruption.] Nevertheless, I invite the cabinet secretary to explain that to senior dentists, who have told us that his Government has its head in the sand.
Obviously, Brexit has played its part. My party opposed Brexit and it is still opposed to it. Nevertheless, the cabinet secretary cannot once again shirk any responsibility by either blaming the pandemic or Brexit for his Government’s inadequacies and his own ministerial disinterest.
I wish it were just hyperbole, but when healthcare in this country is in such dire straits that people are literally being forced to pull out their own teeth, the use of the word “crisis” in the motion feels far too modest, and I cannot believe that the Government sought in its amendment to remove that word.
It should go without saying that tooth care, like any other form of healthcare, should be universally accessible and free at the point of delivery. Scottish Liberal Democrats were instrumental in introducing free dental checks in Scotland when the party was in coalition with Labour and in pressing for a new dental school to address shortages in the dentistry workforce. However, over the past 15 years, Scottish dentistry has been left to rot in the incapable hands of the Scottish National Party.
We find ourselves in this situation because our national health service has been starved of funding. The money that dentists are being given every time they carry out an NHS procedure is not going far enough to make the work sustainable, with some even running at a loss. Unsurprisingly, more and more dentists are becoming fully private, with only 18 per cent of practices taking on new NHS patients.
The Liberal Democrats have solutions. We want the Government to reform the existing funding structures for dentistry, so that dentists are incentivised to take on NHS patients. We want the Government to rewrite the NHS recovery plan so that it includes dentists in more comprehensive ways and properly recognises the importance of dentists in the course of that recovery. People are suffering. It is time that the Government woke up to that.
I move,
That the Parliament believes that there is a crisis in NHS dentistry; notes that the number of NHS dental check-ups and treatments being conducted are dramatically below pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels; further notes with concern that the number of dentists who are carrying out NHS work has fallen in 11 NHS boards, with the chair of the British Dental Association’s Scottish Dental Practice Committee warning of a “wholescale exodus” from the sector; understands that most dentists are not accepting new NHS patients and that polling has shown that many of those registered have been unable to get appointments; believes that the lack of government action to resolve this is leaving people in pain and will cause wider mouth health issues to be missed, and calls on the Scottish Government to rewrite the NHS Recovery Plan so that it includes dentistry fully and properly recognises the importance of dentists in the course of the recovery, and to urgently reform the funding structures so that dentists can return to taking on NHS activity and enable more patients to be seen.