258,000 Signatures Dentistry Petition Handed In To Downing Street
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- Published: Monday, 13 January 2025 09:41
- Written by Guy Tuggle
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A petition bearing over 258,000 signatures demanding action to address the dental crisis was delivered to Keir Starmer in Downing Street last week.
British Dental Association Chair Eddie Crouch was accompanied by, amongst others Consultant Tom Thayer, oral cancer patient and survivor Anthony Page, Women‘s Institute representative Camilla Revell. Three MPs, two Labour and one LibDem, joined the profession and patient representatives.
Consultant and Lecturer in Oral Surgery at Liverpool University Tom Thayer, is no stranger to the campaign to reform NHS dentistry.
Last year he hit the professional and mainstream media headlines when he teamed up with The Mirror newspaper and the WI to ignite a petition to ’Save NHS Dentistry’.
The petition’s demands are:
1. Properly fund NHS dentistry, so everyone who needs care can secure it.
2. Scrap the failed contracts forcing dentists out of the NHS and rebuild a service with prevention at its heart.
The petition’s preamble opens with Thayer declaring "I’m Tom Thayer, a hospital consultant. I treat patients left with horrifying mouth injuries after trying to pull out their own teeth. Everyone who needs an NHS dentist should be able to get an appointment."
The delegation was lent a sobering reminder of the importance of dental examinations. Joining Mssr Tayer and Crouch was Anthony Page, a survivor of mouth cancer who says his life was saved by a timely dental examination. Mr Page’s wife June and son Alex accompanied him to deliver the petition to the Prime Minister.
Although the BDA met with Health Secretary Wes Streeting on the first Monday after the July election and has since been talking with Streeting’s ministerial team, GDPUK understands that ’formal negotiations’ on a new dental contract have yet to begin.
The BDA says that it ’welcomes the tone’ set by the new government but it laments the impact of the budget on dental practices, in particular the delay - currently eight months - in stumping up the 2024-25 pay uplift, a delay which the BDA says is ’a record’.
Negotiations are already underway with the BMA in a bid to resolve contractual issues surrounding the GP service.
Speaking for the BDA, Eddie Crouch said that the public and the profession had a simple message for the PM: “The clock is ticking on NHS dentistry and this Government must make good on its promises. If reform is kicked into the long grass there won’t be a service left to save.”
Image Caption: Consultant and Oral Surgery Lecturer Tom Thayer and the BDA’s Eddie Crouch flanked by mouth cancer patient Anthony Page and others hand NHS dentistry petition in to Downing Street
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