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Dentists have pledged to deliver 700,000 more urgent appointments a year after talks with the Health Secretary.
The British Dental Association (BDA) said it was ready to work on plans set out in Labour’s manifesto to overhaul NHS dentistry.
This includes reforming the “not fit for purpose” dental contract and increasing the number of emergency appointments available for both adults and children.
In one of Wes Streeting’s first pieces of official business as health secretary, both parties agreed to prioritise a “cost-neutral rescue package” to secure the hundreds of thousands of additional appointments.
Mr Streeting said Labour would “start by delivering the 700,000 extra emergency appointments we promised”.
“Patients find it impossible to see a dentist, with huge parts of the country [in] dental deserts,” he said. “Today, I met with the BDA to begin the work of rebuilding the service, including contract reform.”
The extra slots will be paid for with the underspend of the NHS dental budget, it is understood. Around £200m of £3 billion allocated to dentists each year is not used and is then syphoned off to fill in other holes in the health service’s finances.
Shawn Charlwood, chairman of BDA’s general dental practice committee, said after the meeting with the Health Secretary on Monday: “The first step to save NHS dentistry is admitting we have a problem. Wes Streeting has done so today,” he said.
“There is finally recognition that failed contracts and underfunding have fuelled the current crisis.”
Despite the positive talks, he said: “We take absolutely nothing for granted, and will hold this Government to account as we did the last. But there’s now a chance to move forward, to rescue and reform a service millions depend on.”
‘Far more constructive’
It is understood the talks were “far more constructive” than they had been under Mr Streeting’s predecessors.
Earlier this year, the Conservatives unveiled an NHS dental recovery plan, which included lowering the entry criteria for dentists trained abroad to work on the health service, as well as £20,000 “golden hellos” for dentists to move to under-served areas.
The previous government had also promised to provide an additional 2.5 million appointments in England over the next year, by increasing incentives to see patients who had not been seen within two years.
Labour has also committed to giving out the bonuses to those willing to relocate, as well as pledging to put on supervised toothbrushing in schools for children aged three to five, and to create an extra 100,000 urgent dental appointments each year for children in a bid to clear backlogs in England.
The party said the additional appointments will be delivered in the evenings and at weekends while the proposals would cost £109m a year.
Reforms to the NHS contract will also likely involve a tie-in so that dentists do a greater share of work on the health service.
Around a third of the 35,000 dentists currently registered with the General Dental Council in England do not do any work for the NHS.
Mr Streeting also went on his first official visit on Monday to a GP surgery in Abbey Wood, south-east London, with NHS chief executive Amanda Pritchard.
On Tuesday, he is set to sit down with the British Medical Association’s (BMA) junior doctor committee in a bid to put an end to strikes that have plagued the NHS for 16 months.