Wales - Debate on the Health and Social Care Committee Report

 

Mike Hedges Labour  4:35, 21 June 2023

numbers of historic patients are lower than the target, which is therefore impossible to achieve. Dentists suggest some solutions: dental contracts that are paid at the same rate for each item of treatment they deliver, a weighted capitation scheme—remember, we used to have that?—and that dentists should be rewarded for seeing higher risk patients more regularly and providing more complex treatments, which take up more time.

There has been success in protecting children's teeth, and that is through Designed to Smile. When I visited a school pre COVID and a 10-year-old in St Thomas asked me, 'What is a filling?', to someone like me whose mouth has got more mercury amalgam than it has anything else, that was a tremendous success, and I think that has been a success. But that, of course, dates back to the days of Edwina Hart. We seem to have had a gap in the middle. Welsh Government must ensure that the Designed to Smile programme is restored to pre-pandemic levels as soon as possible.

There's another way of improving dental health, and that is fluoride in the water, as the committee pointed out. I agree with the committee that the Welsh Government should commission research into the public health value and attitude towards introducing fluoride into the public water system in Wales and commit to publishing the findings of this research. Prevention is always better than treatment.

There is a shortage of qualified dentists undertaking NHS dental work in Wales. That's probably why we're having this discussion today. This, to me, indicates there is a need for a new dental school in Wales, and I have previously suggested Swansea University as a possible site, although I'm sure people from the north will suggest Bangor. I think it's important—. Having another dental teaching centre soon, at a site where we already have a medical school, is really important, and if it doesn't happen to Bangor or Swansea first, the other one comes second.

Finally, following Brexit we will have lost a large number of southern and eastern European dentists, including in the dental practice I go to. What is being done to allow non-EU qualified dentists to practice in Wales?