Members of Parliament (MPs) have welcomed the Government’s new plans to provide thousands of individuals across Cornwall with access to urgent and emergency dental care. The initiative is part of a broader NHS dentistry recovery effort, which will deliver a total of 10,910 additional urgent dental appointments in Cornwall.
Local MPs Noah Law, Labour MP for Newquay and St Austell, and Ben Maguire, Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall, have been vocal advocates for addressing the region’s dental care crisis.
Noah Law emphasized the widespread frustration expressed by residents during last year’s election campaign over the declining state of public services. He cited years of underinvestment and lack of reform by the previous Conservative Government, which severely impacted NHS services, particularly in dentistry. According to Law, Cornwall has seen a significant drop in adult access to NHS dental care, with the number of adults receiving care falling from 47.3% in 2019-2020 to just 34.5% in 2023-2024.
The decline in NHS dental access has been felt across the country, with some areas witnessing distressing scenes of patients waiting in long queues. Law criticized the previous government’s failed initiatives, such as the New Patient Premium scheme, which he argued wasted £88 million without addressing the needs of new patients.
He praised the Labour Government’s commitment to reversing this situation, announcing that an additional 700,000 urgent dental appointments would be rolled out across the country, including 10,910 in Cornwall. This move, according to Law, marks a crucial step towards reforming the NHS dental system that had been left broken by the previous administration.
Stephen Kinnock, Minister for Care, confirmed the Labour Government’s pledge to fix NHS dentistry by providing these additional urgent care appointments, fulfilling a key promise made during the election campaign. While acknowledging that it would take time to rebuild the system, Law expressed optimism that this step would contribute to long-term improvements in access to NHS dental services.
Ben Maguire, who has actively campaigned for better dental care in Cornwall, also welcomed the new plan but cautioned that it does not address the full scale of the crisis. Over 20,000 people in Cornwall are still on the waiting list for an NHS dentist, and Maguire warned that the measures currently in place are insufficient to tackle the underlying issues.
Maguire, who has raised the issue of NHS dental shortages with both Parliament and local health leaders, noted that Cornwall has seen a significant loss of dentists, with one in five leaving the region since 2019. This has resulted in families facing dire situations, such as resorting to extracting their own teeth or sending children to A&E for life-threatening dental infections.
While acknowledging that the new appointments are a step forward, Maguire called for more radical reforms, including the overhaul of the NHS dental contract, targeted recruitment of dentists, and the introduction of mobile emergency dental units to reach remote rural areas. He vowed to continue pushing for systemic changes to ensure that all residents of North Cornwall can access dental care when they need it.
In summary, while Cornwall’s additional urgent dental appointments represent progress, both MPs stressed that a more comprehensive and long-term solution is needed to address the deep-rooted challenges facing NHS dental services in the region and across the country.
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