MP welcomes 20K 'vital' dental appointments for South Yorkshire

The Rotherham MP – who campaigned for the previous Conservative government to tackle what she called NHS “dental deserts” – had also highlighted the plight of David Creamer, a Greasbrough resident who got in touch with her “out of despair” after he was left taking painkillers and on a soup-only diet because he could not register with an NHS dentist.

The Labour government last week announced hundreds of thousands of people are expected to soon be able to access urgent and emergency dental care as the NHS rolls out 700,000 extra urgent appointments, with 19,983 marked for South Yorkshire.

Ms Champion said 17 per cent of patients in the region who had tried to see an NHS dentist in the last two years were unable to do so, dubbing access an “increasingly a lottery across the country.”

Describing the extra urgent appointments as “vital” and “desperately needed”, she said: “Everyone in Rotherham knows the scale of the challenge facing NHS dentistry after years of failure under the Tories.

“In recent years it has become near impossible to get an NHS dental appointment, and it is scandalous that the number one reason that five to nine-year-olds are admitted to hospital is because of tooth decay.

“Of course it cannot be rebuilt overnight, but I am delighted that this Labour Government is taking such an important step not only repairing NHS dentistry but making it fit for the future.”

Stephen Kinnock, minister of state for care, added: “NHS dentistry has been left broken after years of neglect with patients left in pain without appointments or queueing around the block just to be seen.

“Through our Plan for Change, this government will rebuild dentistry – focusing on prevention, retention of NHS dentists and reforming the NHS contract to make NHS work more appealing to dentists and increase capacity for more patients.

“This will take time but today marks an important step towards getting NHS dentistry back on its feet.”