Lib Dems hit out at 'dental deserts' with thousands of children going to A&E with tooth decay

Of those, 2,784 were children, and this figure was up by 18 per cent on 2019.

Only 61 of the 141 NHS trusts provided data, meaning that the actual number is likely to be even higher.

In the Yorkshire trusts that responded to the Liberal Democrat FoIs, there were varying responses.

Amongst under-18s, Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust saw a 25 per cent rise in attendances compared with 2019, and a significant increase on 2023.

While at Mid Yorkshire Teaching NHS Trust, which serves Pontefract, Wakefield and Dewsbury, there was a 24 per cent increase on five years ago.

However, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust saw a 35 per cent reduction in children attending A&E with tooth decay.

Liberal Democrat health and social care spokesperson, Helen Morgan said: "It is a national scandal that children are ending up in A&E in agony because they can’t get a dentist appointment.

“Parents are being forced to watch their little ones cry through the night, all because the NHS dental system has been left to rot.

“We’re now seeing vast swathes of the country being turned into dental deserts, with no sign of things getting better.

“The Conservatives had years to fix this crisis, but instead their neglect only led to it spiralling out of control.

“Now, the Labour government is showing a devastating lack of ambition to turn things around.”

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 more recently introduced a new supervised toothbrushing scheme for three to five-year-olds.

However, a recent Public Accounts Committee report found that government attempts to improve access to NHS dentistry in recent years have, in some cases, made the situation worse.

British Dental Association 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.