Wes Streeting defends only paying for half the population to get an NHS dentist

Health Secretary Wes Streeting has defended why the Government is only paying for half the population of England to get an NHS dentist.

MPs on the Health Committee grilled Mr Streeting on whether he would “reconsider” a decision to stick with similar funding for dentistry that Labour inherited from the previous Tory government. The current £3 billion budget for England is only enough to fund care for half the population. The committee has previously heard that the budget has fallen from £3.6 billion in a decade and the British Dental Association said this equates to a funding cut of a third in real terms.

Mr Streeting said: “There is a constant tension between the level of ambition we have as a Government, the level of demand put on us by Parliament and the public, and the choices and trade-offs that we face. We are trying to deal with an NHS that has such a breadth and depth of challenges.”

At this point acting committee chair Paulette Hamilton, Labour MP for Birmingham Erdington, intervened to say: “Let me stop you there, because you could talk for another five minutes and I haven't got five minutes, will you reconsider this [funding] decision?”

Mr Streeting replied: “It is something we are constantly under pressure from Parliament and the public about, and we will do as much as we can as fast as we can on the NHS dentistry.”

Before the 2024 General Election Labour promised to reform the “flawed” NHS dental payment contract which leaves dentists making a loss treating patients who need most care. It pays dentists the same if a patient needs three fillings as if a patient needs 20 fillings. It has caused an exodus of NHS dentists to the private sector and means dental practices are no longer taking on new NHS patients.

However this contract reform will depend on the overall funding settlement. An earlier committee hearing heard that dentistry got 3.3% of the NHS budget for England in 2010, but it is now down to 1.5%.

Evidence by dentistry minister Stephen Kinnock at a previous hearing suggested the Treasury is refusing to fund radical reform and any new contract will likely recycle current "underspends" where dentists have to return cash due to the flawed contract.

READ MORE: Major NHS change will see EVERYONE get a dentist within four years

Last year the British Dental Association said there was £400 million underspend - much of which was quietly being syphoned off to other areas of the NHS.

This underspend occurs because money is clawed back from struggling dental practices who do not hit treatment targets, usually due to lack of staff. The NHS contract pays the practice for each Unit of Dental Activity - known as a UDA. A check-up is worth one UDA while a filling is worth three.

On the other hand, if an NHS dentist treats more patients than their target then they receive no payment for it - effectively capping the numbers able to access a dentist.

Wes Streeting said: “The first thing we could do is make sure that we're making the most of the money that's already going in it. In opposition we complained a lot about the dentistry ‘underspend’... but we know that fundamental long term reform is needed.”

Britain has the lowest ratio of dentists per capita of any country in the G7.

Eddie Crouch, chair of the British Dental Association, said: “The sort of sums required to ‘transform’ dentistry are lost down the back of the sofa in the NHS in any given month. Restoring care to millions and consigning 'DIY' dentistry back to the Victorian era won’t break the bank. But they will require sustainable investment."