Charlotte Cane

Almost half of children in Cambridgeshire have not seen a dentist in the last 12 months. That will have many impacts that we can only imagine, but one of them is that one in every eight children in East Cambridgeshire have tooth decay by the time they are five. That should be utterly unacceptable to us all. In short, Ely and East Cambridgeshire is an NHS dental desert. We have heard Labour Members make valiant attempts to blame almost anybody else for this situation, but it was a Labour Government who introduced the new dentist contract in 2006, despite lots of people warning that it would lead to dentists leaving the NHS. Indeed, that is exactly what we have seen: they have left in droves. In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, we have a vacancy rate for NHS general dentists of 24%—almost one in four. Even more frustratingly, I have heard from dentists locally who are willing and able to take on more NHS patients, and have contacted the ICB and asked for the funding to do so, but have been refused that funding. I have constituents who cannot get an NHS dentist appointment, and I have dentists who are willing to give them an NHS dentist appointment, but nobody seems willing to give them the money so that that can happen.