Government attempts to improve NHS dentistry 'have been a complete failure', MPs say

A new PAC report also says the dental contract “remains unfit for purpose”, with current arrangements only sufficient for about half of England’s population to see an NHS dentist over a two-year period.

While recent British Dental Association figures found the situation in Yorkshire was even worse.

Its analysis of government data found 13m people are unable to access an NHS dentist, while in the North East and Yorkshire 97 per cent of people who try and access NHS dental services fail.

A recent Health and Social Care Select Committee report found that four of five ICB areas with the lowest number of dentists doing NHS work in the country were in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

The Humber and North Yorkshire ICB has only 31 dentists with NHS activity per every 100,000 of the local population, while South Yorkshire has the highest rate of tooth extractions in the country.

The Dental Recovery Plan was unveiled in February 2024, by the previous government, with a pledge that it would fund more than 1.5m additional NHS treatments or 2.5m appointments.

This included a new patient premium (NPP), with practices receiving credits for each eligible new patient they saw, a “golden hello” recruitment scheme which introduced £20,000 incentive payments for dentists, and mobile dental vans targeting communities.

But the PAC found the NPP – which has cost at least £88m since it was introduced last March – has resulted in 3 per cent fewer new patients seeing an NHS dentist.

The “golden hello” scheme had appointed fewer than 20 per cent of the expected 240 dentists by February 2025, the report added, while mobile dental vans had since been dropped.

PAC chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “This country is now years deep in an avalanche of harrowing stories of the impact of dentistry’s system failure.

“It is utterly disgraceful that, in the 21st century, some Britons have been forced to remove their own teeth.

“Last year’s Dental Recovery Plan was supposed to address these problems, something our report has found it has signally failed to do.

“Almost unbelievably, the Government’s initiatives appear to have actually resulted in worsening the picture, with fewer new patients seen since the plan’s introduction.”

The report claims that current funding and contractual arrangements would only cover about half of England’s population to see an NHS dentist over a two-year period “at best”.

The PAC warned that without proper remuneration, more dentists would move exclusively to the private sector.

Sir Geoffrey added: “NHS dentistry is broken. The Government could hardly fail to agree on this point, and indeed I am glad that it is not in denial that the time for tinkering at the edges is over. It is time for big decisions.”

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said the Labour Government “inherited a broken NHS dental sector” and was fixing it through its Plan for Change.

It said that in February, it had delivered on its manifesto pledge by rolling out 700,000 extra urgent appointments and pledged to introduce a new supervised toothbrushing scheme for three to five-year-olds.