Hansard

In case members have not had enough of me, I will speak in this debate, too. In preparation, I asked for people’s experiences of NHS dentistry. I had a tidal wave of responses: indeed, I am still receiving responses this very day. The stories are nothing short of extraordinary—apart from those of Scottish National Party supporters, who, it appears, are all registered with NHS dentists, get an appointment before they ask for one and even have the shiniest teeth on the whole planet.

It is certainly true that many people get a good NHS dental service experience, but so many people do not. Our job in Parliament is never to stop until everyone gets the service that they need and deserve.

The steps that people have taken are nothing short of extreme. Those steps have included DIY dentistry with tools that have been bought on Amazon; travelling hundreds of miles; sometimes paying a small fortune; and hunting for an NHS dentist for weeks on end without success.

Elaine Stewart could not find an NHS dentist in St Andrews, so she is still using her parents’ address on the west coast. She is not alone.

Naomi Kimber from Newburgh is a single mother with no support. She is on universal credit, she cannot work and does not drive. She told me:

“In one month, I spent almost £400 on X-rays, two fillings and cleaning. This left me short for food, which meant I skipped meals so that my son could eat.”

That is what NHS dentistry has brought for that young mother.

Alfie Cook could not get any treatment during the pandemic. He later paid £2,600 for private treatment because he could not get an NHS dentist.

Stephen Kelley from Tayport says that he has now been on a waiting list for four years. He told me:

“I have had to resort to ‘DIY dentistry’ with dental tools purchased on Amazon”.

He added, in brackets, that he was “not joking”.

Another constituent told me that he was going to Turkey for treatment, because it was cheaper to travel all the way there than it was to incur private costs here. So, as well as getting our ferries from Turkey, we are getting our teeth done in Turkey.

NHS dentistry is in crisis. It was in trouble before the pandemic. The British Dental Association says that the revised payment system that the Scottish Government introduced in November last year has made little to no difference.

No dentists in Fife are accepting new NHS patients. This month, Nanodent in Glenrothes said that it had no choice but to shut for “an extended period”. Redburn Dental in Kirkcaldy is going fully private due to on-going pressures. Last year, the Newburgh practice in my constituency went private and the Tayport practice closed altogether. A practice called Mydentist in Prestwick, Ayrshire, dropped 1,500 patients overnight, as it went private.

Almost 82 per cent of NHS dentists in Scotland no longer take new patients, and 83 per cent say that they will reduce their NHS numbers. Therefore, it is absolutely bogus to claim that, because a high percentage of people are registered with an NHS dentist, everything is fine.

Research that was carried out by my party last year found that almost half of people who are registered have not been seen by an NHS dentist in two years, 1.2 million have not had an examination or treatment in five years, and more than 10 per cent have not seen an NHS dentist in more than a decade. New statistics that were published yesterday by Public Health Scotland reveal that there was a 25 per cent drop in the number of NHS dental examinations that were paid for between December 2019 and December 2023—a drop of 50,000 from 195,000.

We should not forget that the SNP has abandoned its promise to abolish all NHS dental charges, but worse than that is that it has increased the charges rather than scrapping them. When the minister stands up next, her first words should be, “There’s a problem with NHS dentistry in Scotland.” If she does that, we can have a serious debate about how to fix it. It should include, I believe, a fee system that reflects the true cost of providing treatment and reverses the 35 per cent real-terms cut that has been made in recent years.

We should raise the cap on numbers of student dentists. Vocational dental training is the entrance to NHS dentistry. We should fund 70 more places, starting this August, and give NHS Education for Scotland the funds to act quickly. Come August, that would open NHS access across the country, with a very moderate financial outlay.

We also need to speed up the registration process for overseas dentists, which currently involves a three-year wait with the General Dental Council. We have the powers to do that in Scotland, so we should get on with it. I know of a dentist who is working as a pizza delivery driver because he simply cannot get registered. The Scottish Government must rewrite the failing NHS recovery plan.

I will finish with a final chilling anecdote; a dentist told me this. Someone with an early stage oral cancer has a five-year survival rate of 80 per cent and a late stage survival rate of only 20 per cent. One oral surgery department reports alarming increases in late presentations of oral cancers. That is something that should send shivers down all of our spines. It is not just about shiny teeth—it is a matter of life and death.