Access to NHS Dentistry

Linsey Farnsworth Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Linsey Farnsworth (Amber Valley) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this vital debate. This issue touches on every community, but I will focus on how the crisis is playing out in my constituency.

Amber Valley has less than a quarter of the national average number of NHS dentists per 100,000 people. When I speak to residents on the doorstep and in my surgeries, I hear the same heartbreaking stories from people in pain who are unable to access an NHS appointment. Some have become so desperate that they have resorted to pulling out their own teeth. During my campaign, I made a promise to the people of Amber Valley to fight for better access to NHS dental care, and that remains my most urgent pledge. We do have a handful of dedicated, hard-working dentists who are maintaining NHS patient lists against difficult odds—dentists such as Dr Nadia Duarte at Amber Valley dental practice—but most surgeries simply do not have the resources to keep their NHS lists open. This puts huge pressure on the few that do, with waiting lists stretching over two years. Simply put, anyone is extremely lucky to get an NHS appointment in Amber Valley.

Amber Valley dentists have told me that our surgeries received the lowest payment per NHS treatment when compared with neighbouring constituencies. This has made it almost impossible to recruit and retain the quality NHS staff we need. I took this up with the Derbyshire integrated care board, saying not just that this was unfair, but that it had created a crisis of health inequality for Amber Valley. I am grateful that it listened and acted. We have secured an additional £240,000 to address this underpayment, allow our surgeries in Amber Valley to take on more NHS staff and make it easier for us to get the NHS appointments we need. It is a real win for Amber Valley, but nothing less than my constituents deserve, although it is only a small part of the solution and one that will take time to bear fruit. That is why I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment to 700,000 additional emergency NHS dental appointments each year, and I urge my constituents to access one of the 16,298 such appointments in Derbyshire.

I promised the people of Amber Valley that I would speak up for them and fight for the dental care that should be their right, so although I am grateful for the progress the Government have made so far, I say to my hon. Friend the Minister: please, let us go further and faster so that no one in Amber Valley has to suffer without the dental care they need.