4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the provision of dental services? OAQ54749

Thank you for the question. More people in Wales have access to national health service dentistry than ever before, and access for children is at an all-time high. However, provision in some parts of Wales remains challenging. Contract reform, investment in dental education and liberalisation of the profession are amongst some of the solutions being implemented.  

Following on from the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee's report on dentistry in Wales, as Assembly Members, we continue to receive complaints from members of the public with regards to the lack of NHS dentists locally. Now, in the old Abertawe Bro Morgannwg area that I represent, we are told that only nine out of the 65 dental practices are taking on new adult NHS patients. Local NHS dentistry is a thing of the past for many of our communities. The Welsh Government has previously spoken, as you have today, of its intention to address recruitment and retention of dentists, and of contract reform in the medium term, but people want to know what actions you are taking now in your discussions with health boards to try and improve local NHS dental capacity in the short term, now? 

I thank the Member for that. I think it is important in recognising that there are genuine challenges in NHS dentistry in some parts of Wales, that we also recognise what has been achieved. There are 40,000 more people receiving NHS dental treatment in Wales today than there were five years ago. In 2014, we had 1,439 dentists working in the NHS in Wales. Today, we have over 1,500 dentists working in the NHS in Wales, and as I said in my original answer, the percentage of children accessing NHS dentistry in Wales is at an all-time high.

Now, there are parts of Wales where that is a bigger challenge. One of the reasons why it is a bigger challenge, thinking of Gareth Bennett's referral to the impact of Brexit on NHS staff, is exactly that: 30 per cent of NHS dental care in the United Kingdom is provided by EU nationals. Those people are not being recruited in the way they were because of the Brexit chill, and that has caused a particular impact on some of the big dental corporates in Wales, finding that they're not able to recruit dentists from overseas as they were once able to do. But, we are training dentists in Wales. We train every year an extra 75 to 80 dentists, but there is a challenge for the profession here as well. The reform of the contract should mean less time spent doing routine work that doesn't have a clinical benefit freeing up time to do more things that you need somebody with the skills of a dentist to do. And we need to see liberalisation of the profession. We have far too many dentists in Wales carrying out routine fillings and dental checks, which you just don't need somebody with a highly-trained capacity of a dentist to do. We need the dental profession to follow the primary care medical profession in Wales in liberalising the number of people and the types of professions able to provide NHS dentistry, and then, we will be able to use those scarce skills to full clinical impact and to provide a greater level of access to NHS dentistry. 

Of course, another challenge to the retention of dentists in Wales is the lack of support they're currently getting if they have stress-related illnesses. Now, this was highlighted by the British Dental Association. They've raised it as a significant issue amongst dentists that work in the NHS throughout the whole of the UK, not just in Wales.

Now, in England, the Department of Health and Social Care has recently announced that it's providing access for dentists to their comprehensive NHS practitioner health support programme, but according to the British Dental Association, there's currently no comparable support from the Welsh Government for mental health well-being here. I just wondered, First Minister, if you would consider that concern, because having trained a dentist, having recruited a dentist, we certainly want to hang on to them, and if lack of help when they're suffering from mental health or stress-related illnesses is one of the reasons that they're leaving dentistry in Wales, then there's something tangible we can do something about—or you can do something about.

I thank Angela Burns for that. I think we are more aware in general now of the pressures that primary care professionals of all sorts feel in a very pressurised part of the workforce. If there are new ideas that we can deploy to support dentists in the important work that they do, then, of course, we would be happy to speak to the BDA through the normal ways in which we have contact with them. I'm very happy to make sure that that is part of that next conversation.