NHS Dentistry and Primary Health Care Debate

Philip outlines problems facing dentists in rural areas

Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): The picture that the hon. Lady paints of Plymouth is much more encouraging than the picture in my constituency, where the direction of travel, far from being positive, is the reverse. To pick up on the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford), there is a brain drain to Australia rather than to the UK. When I was knocking on doors just before the election, I met a young dentist who had young children and could no longer make a living from his private practice in Bridgnorth, so he was planning to emigrate to Australia-perhaps to indulge in some of the practices to which my hon. Friend referred. That illustrates the problems of providing dentistry, whether private or NHS, in rural areas, which are compounded by the lack of NHS dental facilities. When a new practice opened in Ludlow earlier this year, the local PCT refused to provide details of its telephone number or address for fear of being inundated with applicants for registration, because there were so few available places. That problem in rural areas does not seem to be reflected as much in cities.