Labour broken promise on dentistry

At the Labour Party Conference in l999, Tony Blair made his now infamous pledge - "everyone will have access to a NHS dentist within 2 years". Eight months later this pledge was reinforced with the Labour Government announcing that it "was firmly committed to making high quality NHS dentistry available to all who want it by September 2001".

Nobody will surprised to learn that between 1997 and 2005, the proportion of the population registered with a NHS dentist has fallen by more than 2 million. In some areas (for example Burnley and Coventry), the number of patients registered with a NHS dentist between 1997 and 2005 in fact fell by between 53 and 60%.


In December 2006 we learnt that "Thousands of children are being denied dental braces and other corrective treatment on the NHS after the Government changed the rules on who is eligible. Orthodontists, who specialise in the correction of irregular teeth and work mainly with children and teenagers, are now turning away more than 7,000 patients a month, patients who, this time last year, would have been given braces on the NHS. Parents are being told that if they want their children's teeth straightened, they must pay up to £3,000 for the work to be carried out privately."


Today we learn that "MORE than 10,000 children with severe dental problems including jaw deformities and an inability to bite properly are waiting up to seven years for corrective treatment on the National Health Service. Orthodontists have warned that in many cases the children suffer from much more serious problems by the time they are finally given treatment. This weekend specialists claimed that in many parts of England the NHS had in effect ceased to provide corrective surgery for children."

And guess what's to blame? Yes, government targets again - "They also warned that the government’s introduction of an 18-week waiting time target for orthodontics at the end of the year would be so difficult to meet that patients would not be referred at all and treatment would be rationed further. Evidence of the collapse in orthodontics in parts of the country is revealed in research by the British Orthodontic Society. It found that in at least seven hospital catchment areas in England, children with serious conditions were waiting more than four years for hospital treatment. In one area of the northeast children are waiting for seven years while in another the delay is 5½ years."


"Everyone will have access to a NHS dentist within 2 years" said Tony Blair in 1999. "What a lying toad" said NotaSheep in 2008.