Scheme to boost access to NHS dentists 'comprehensively failed', MPs say

A scheme meant to boost access to NHS dentists under the last government appears to have “comprehensively failed”, MPs have said

Introduced in February last year by Conservative health ministers, the Dental Recovery Plan promised to introduce 1.5 million new treatments for patients and offered dentists a “bonus” to take NHS patients.

According to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), the scheme appears to have “resulted in worsening the picture” more than a year later.

Under the Dental Recovery Plan, practices were offered a new patient premium (NPP) – which the PAC found cost at least £88m since it was introduced and resulted in 3% fewer new patients seeing an NHS dentist.

The plan’s “golden hello” recruitment scheme had also been found to have appointed fewer than 20% of the expected 240 dentists by February this year.

Their report, published today, also said vulnerable patients “continue to suffer the most” and that the dental contract “remains unfit for purpose”.

Current arrangements are only sufficient for about half of England’s population to see an NHS dentist over two years, it added.

The PAC report also said “it does not appear” that NHS England or the Department of Health and Social Care “have a sense of what level of funding would provide a realistic incentive for dentists to prioritise NHS work”.

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‘NHS dentistry is broken’

PAC chairman Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said: “It is utterly disgraceful that, in the 21st century, some Britons have been forced to remove their own teeth.

“Last year’s Dental Recovery Plan was supposed to address these problems, something our report has found it has signally failed to do.

“Almost unbelievably, the government’s initiatives appear to have actually resulted in worsening the picture, with fewer new patients seen since the plan’s introduction.”

He added: “NHS dentistry is broken. The government could hardly fail to agree on this point, and indeed I am glad that it is not in denial that the time for tinkering at the edges is over.

“It is time for big decisions.”

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 pledged to introduce a new supervised toothbrushing scheme for three to five-year-olds.

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