Choices

So the General Election is here and we need to make a choice as to how to vote. Personally I am struggling to decide where to put my cross when I get into the little booth.

Labour have been in power for a while and I feel that change is needed. However I can remember the Thatcher years and how glad we all were to get rid of the last Conservative government. But could the Liberal Democrats run a government with no experience behind them? We have only one other candidate in my constituency (UKIP).

I've had a little look around to see what the main parties are promising on dentistry. It doesn't feature very highly in the manifestos and I had to do a bit of searching to find anything!

Labour are full of what they have already done and how they're going to continue to provide more funding for more NHS dentists. Tony Blair's original promise of an NHS dentist for everyone never happened, in fact the reforms they introduced pushed more and more dentists towards private practice, and meant that although I would have taken an NHS orthodontic contract there was not one available for my young practice.

The Conservatives are, predictably, lamenting Labour's "terrible dental legacy". They want to make all new dentists work for the NHS for five years. They want to increase preventative dentistry and cut the rise in dental extractions, and introduce another new dental contract (the current one is only four years old). Dentists have not forgotten that the Conservative change in dental contracts was the trigger for the first wave of dentists leaving the NHS in 1989 (I hope that date is right).

All I can find for the Liberal Democrats is a short line promising reform of NHS dental contracts and incentives for dentists to carry out preventative work.

There are already pilots for new contracts as it has been patently clear that the system introduced in 2006 is flawed, in fact most dentists said that at the time but we didn't get a choice! Depending on the outcome of the election these could be stopped immediately!

What is clear is that NHS dentistry is in trouble. Less dentists, less funding, more bureaucracy, more paperwork. Which is why many dentists have chosen, or been forced, to expand their private practice and leave or reduce their NHS commitment. Whichever government we get will have an uphill struggle to correct the problems. They need to recognise that the dental landscape has changed and a system of free for everyone, easily accessible dentistry will never exist again.