Labour promises 100,000 extra child dental appointments

Labour have promised to create 100,000 extra dental appointments for children, in a bid to clear backlogs in England.

The new appointments will be for urgent and emergency care and on evenings and weekends, according to Labour’s plan if they win the general election.

Access to an NHS dentist has become increasingly difficult in many areas – with tooth decay the most common reason children aged five to nine are admitted to hospital.

The Conservatives have their own “dental recovery plan”, which was launched earlier this year and offers dentists cash incentives to take on extra NHS patients.

Labour’s plans, announced on Tuesday, also include a plan to introduce supervised brushing for children, double the number of NHS scanners and reform dentists’ contracts to boost numbers where they are needed.

The £109m pledge will be paid for by tightening up non-dom tax rules and clamping down on tax avoidance, Labour said.

Data published in February, external showed thousands of children and teenagers were being admitted to hospital for tooth decay treatment.

There were nearly 48,000 tooth extractions in NHS hospitals in England for patients aged up to 9 carried out in 2023. Two thirds of these were because of a primary diagnosis of tooth decay – up 17% from the previous 12 months.

Childhood tooth extractions cost NHS hospitals £64.3m last year, with decay-related extractions making up £40.7m of this.