NHS Dental Care

Part of 4. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:56 pm on 31 January 2023.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 3:56, 31 January 2023

Thanks very much. Those are 123,000 new appointments that have actually taken place. There is a lot of noise around this, but these are the facts, that actually we have 74,000 new patients who are adults who have been seen, and 49,000 new children who have been seen who weren't being seen before. Of course, when you introduce something new, there is a little bit of difficulty and tension in the system. Obviously, if we're going to pay people to do a job, they need to deliver on that job, and if they don't deliver on that job, yes, we are going to claw back money. I'm not going to apologise for that, because we are the guardians of the taxpayers' money as well. That is the deal. You pay for a service, if you don't deliver the service you're not going to get paid. So, they may not like that, but I'm afraid that is the situation. The fact is that, actually, fewer than 20 contracts have been handed back out of the 413 that exist in Wales. So, as I said, there is a lot of noise, but in reality, most people—the vast, vast majority of dentists—have moved over to this new contract. 

Of course, it is easier to do a six-monthly check-up on somebody with healthy teeth than to see somebody new who perhaps hasn't been seen for a long time and then to have the need to see somebody in more detail afterwards. But we are doing this very deliberately. We need people to see dentists who haven't seen a dentist in a long time. So, I'm not going to apologise for the contract that we've put in place. What I will say is that I am, of course, happy to meet with the BDA—I know you have very strong connections with them. But perhaps we do need to just make sure that there is a real understanding of what we're trying to achieve here. We're trying to achieve this in the face of very severe financial constraints where we have to maximise the ability of the taxpayer to get as much as they can from the system.