Richard Foord

I pay credit to my hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance) for working with the Backbench Business Committee to secure this debate. He knows that the south-west is the worst-affected region for NHS dentistry—according to NHS data from March 2025, fewer than one in three adults in the south-west had seen a dentist in the previous two years. That is the lowest rate of any region, and a full 14 percentage points below the north-east or the north-west of England. When people cannot access a dentist, they end up in an acute hospital. In 2023-24, one in every 460 people in the south-west went to accident and emergency for a dental problem; that is almost twice as common as in London, where the figure was one in every 860 people. The south-west has the highest vacancy rate for NHS dentists in the country, at 22%, and it also has one of the lowest ratios of full-time dentists to head of population. Despite the Government’s pledges and dental plans, little has changed on the ground. In 2025, just 38% of adults in Devon had been seen by a dentist in the previous two years. That is down from 54% a decade ago. Only 47% of children in the county had seen a dentist in the previous 12 months—down from 61% a decade ago. Those who cannot afford private dental treatment are often left with no choice but to let their children go without care for years. We must move towards a preventive model of dentistry. Affordable, routine check-ups can catch problems early, saving the NHS the greater cost of emergency care later. I want to give the example of Ken from Northleigh. Ken is a pensioner. He has dentures that no longer fit, and with no NHS dentists accepting patients in our area, he went to a local private dentist. That dentist told him that it would cost £800 to prepare his mouth and a further £3,000 for the new dentures. Ken is lucky—he has savings; he can afford to pay—but how could anybody on the state pension ever afford such a price? The last Conservative Government proposed targeted recruitment incentives, or golden hellos. However, the local democracy reporter Bradley Gerrard discovered that only one had been taken up in Devon in November 2024. Let us properly fund the training and retention of dental professionals. No one should end up in A&E because they cannot get seen by a dentist. The Government say that they are serious about fixing the system; let us see it on the ground in our constituencies.