The speech made by Melanie Onn, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, in the House of Commons on 22 May 2025.
I beg to move,
That this House has considered access to NHS dentistry.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting time for this debate and the colleagues who supported that application. I am pleased that many Members want to speak and am aware of the limitations on time, so I will keep my remarks brief.
During the general election, Labour promised to tackle the lack of NHS dental services, and I welcome the progress already made in the Labour Government’s first 10 months. After 14 years of neglect we are finally starting to see action to address the crisis in NHS dental care, including the launch of 700,000 extra urgent dental appointments, with my own integrated care board in Humber and North Yorkshire delivering 27,196 of them across the region.
This Government are rightly focusing on prevention by rolling out much-needed supervised tooth-brushing schemes in schools. That is a small intervention with long-term benefits, particularly for children growing up in areas like mine where levels of tooth decay are among the highest in England. Currently, one in three five-year-olds in deprived areas experience tooth decay—a shocking statistic that simply must be addressed.
Over 260,000 people have signed a petition led by the British Dental Association, the Women’s Institute and the Daily Mirror calling on the Government to urgently deliver on their promise to reform NHS dentistry, and the demand could not be more urgent. Catherine, one of many constituents who has written to me about dental provision, had been with her dentist for over a decade but during the pandemic a missed appointment—a simple missed appointment that was cancelled by the surgery itself—saw her removed from her regular appointments, and she has since been unable to join another practice, being told that waiting lists would take at least two years. In the meantime she suffered devastating deterioration to her oral health, losing all of her back teeth, suffering with an infected crown and bridge, and facing the real fear of losing her top teeth too; and Catherine is only in her 40s. She was quoted £14,000 privately for treatment. She simply cannot afford that. She has had to endure constant pain that no one should be left to bear.
Constituents regularly tell me that they cannot find an NHS dentist taking new patients. They are calling every single practice listed on the NHS website and they are getting nowhere. People are living in pain, they are missing work and their mental health is suffering. Some people are even attempting their own dental work, and we cannot allow that to become the norm.
The desire for action is also supported by dental practices in my constituency. One of them told me:
“We’re seeing high-need patients we’ve never treated before, often for complex work—but we’re doing this using the same budget we’ve had for years.”
In fact, some of the new urgent care and schools-based initiatives are not additionally funded. The BDA’s most recent figures show that dentists in England are delivering the least NHS care of all four UK nations: only 39% of dentists in England are spending most of their time on NHS work, compared with nearly 60% in Scotland. Practices are delivering NHS treatments at a loss: they lose over £42 for every denture fitted and nearly £8 for every new patient they see.
This Labour Government pledged to reform the dental contract: it was in our manifesto; it was part of the plan that we were elected on. I welcome the early signs of recovery, but when we say that we want to go further, faster, it is precisely on issues like this that the public are looking to Government to deliver.
In Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes and across the nation we are privileged to have so many dedicated dental professionals. Tomorrow I am visiting Dental Design Studio to celebrate its 20 years of high-quality dental care provision in Cleethorpes. It is a real credit to the team there who have delivered consistent care to local people, often under increasing strain. And our young people are not forgotten locally: thanks to the commitment of Dr Jatinder Ubhi from Dentology, multiple young people in my constituency have received essential dental support.
We must not let dentistry become a luxury service only for those who can afford to go private. We need a new approach that is fair, that funds dentists properly, and that delivers accessible care to everyone who needs it.
