I'm grateful to be able to speak on the committee's report. I'm delighted, actually, we did this one-day report, because it shone a light on a part of the NHS here in Wales that is so very vital to people's long-term health and yet sometimes is really overlooked. And I'm pleased that the Government has accepted all the recommendations, although I do have commentary on that. 

'Everyone should have access to good-quality NHS dental services'. This is the headline on the Government's Health in Wales website page on how to find a dentist. Now, that's quite tricky in an awful lot of Wales. About 45 per cent of the population—that's almost 1.5 million individuals—have not seen a high street NHS dentist in the last two years. And I'm concerned about the stagnation that these figures actually show up, because, nine years ago, 55 per cent of the population was being treated within the NHS dentistry service. Today, 55 per cent of the population is being treated in the NHS dentistry service. That sounds like good news, doesn't it, but, of course, our population's grown by almost 200,000, so, actually, we're beginning to reverse and, rather than reverse or stagnate, we need to improve.

So, Minister, I'd be very grateful if you could just talk us through how you think we're going to be able to address this and increase the numbers of people who are having access to NHS dentistry services. Because, in my constituency, there is no dental practice that is accepting new adult or child NHS patients whatsoever. Only 15.5 per cent of NHS practices throughout Wales are currently accepting adult NHS patients, and only 27 per cent are accepting new children, which, actually, is really bad news for a couple of reasons. One is it actually starts to negate all the positive work in Designed to Smile, because there's no encouragement to carry it on. Two, every time you go into a hospital, you're asked about the state of your teeth. It's absolutely vital and it's recognised by the medical profession. They promote the fact that, unless you have good, healthy teeth, you are liable to open yourself up to all manner of infections and tendencies for heart failure and all the rest of it. So, unless we have really, really good teeth and we keep our teeth healthy, then we are opening ourselves up to further illnesses. So, we're immediately setting ourselves up to fail if we do not give people access to good dentistry. 

And it's not a snapshot in time. I noted in your response that you said this was a snapshot, but this is two different years that all this has been monitored over. So, what's the real problem? Well, the real problem is there's no new money. All the recommendations you've accepted, which is great, but none of the recommendations have any financial implication whatsoever, which means there is no new money. The value of the total dental budget in 2017-18 is worth 15 per cent less in real terms compared to the budget six years ago, but I can assure you that in the six years capital costs have increased, staff costs have increased, everything else has increased. So, of course, what's happening is that the patient is being squeezed, services to the patient are being squeezed. An expenditure of £186.7 million in 2012-13, which is what we spent, should equate to £216.57 million now, and that's just to keep pace with inflation. Our six-year shortfall for last year was over £29 million, and £29 million in a small part of the NHS sector like this actually makes for an awful lot of money that can make an awful lot of difference. So, I'm deeply concerned about the fact that we have no new money.

The other point that also concerns me, and pertains to our recommendation 1, is about the fact that there are still pilot practices—or there's still a desire by the chief dental officer to implement new pilot practices to test how we ought to relook at the unit of dental activity. What I don't understand about this is that some years ago, I had the great good fortune to go down to some pilots that were being run by the Welsh Government in Swansea, and there's been one elsewhere—very successful. It absolutely looked at people in the round, it looked at the holistic way of being able to measure their dental health. The downside was that it was highly preventative, so they saw slightly fewer patients, but in the long term the benefit to Wales, to the dental service, was absolutely outstanding. I would be very grateful, Minister, if you could just clarify why you've not gone ahead with any of those pilots that were tested and seen to be positive, but instead we are waiting and waiting and waiting, and spending yet more time in trying to redesign the wheel and come up with yet another alternative, when we seem to have some very successful ones that your Government came up with not so very long ago.