The Public Accounts Committee – responsible for overseeing government spending, and ensuring cash is spent effectively and honestly – has published its new report ‘Fixing NHS dentistry’.
It’s what we set out to achieve when this inquiry began: a clear call from MPs for fundamental reform of NHS dentistry, underpinned by sustainable funding.
The Committee have slammed repeated tweaks at the margins from the last government and expressed concern over the lack of detail from the new administration on the shape and timings of a break from the UDA contract.
The PAC has also called on the authorities to be clear what the actual cost of delivering NHS dentistry is, stating that without that "any efforts at reform will fail to address fundamental issues around the affordability of NHS work."
Evidence we put to the Committee showed the typical practice loses over £42 delivering a set of NHS dentures. What it speaks to is the need for a credible cost of service exercise to underpin the reform process.
News comes as analysis published by the Nuffield Trust and The King’s Fund shows satisfaction with NHS dentistry is at an all-time low. As recently as 2019 this was at 60%, but it has now fallen to a record low of 20%. Dissatisfaction levels - at 55% - are the highest for any specific NHS service asked about.
The Labour Party committed to reform the discredited contract fuelling the crisis in NHS dentistry. Lord Darzi’s diagnosis of the problems in the NHS noted: "if dentistry is to continue as a core NHS service, urgent action is needed to develop a contract that balances activity and prevention, is attractive to dentists and rewards those dentists who practice in less served areas.” We are waiting for a mandate for those negotiations to begin.
MPs have arrived at an inescapable conclusion, that tweaks at the margins have not and will not save NHS dentistry.
Certainly, we've never budged from our view that governments past and present have needed to go further and faster.
“Everybody knows what needs to be done,” noted PAC Chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown MP.
“It shouldn’t really take too long. But given the urgency of the problem... it does need to be done sooner rather than later.”
We're ready to roll up our sleeves and start on what’s required to give this service a future.