BETTER oral health for our children is vital. We know that teaching good routines from an early age helps reduce bad teeth. Tooth decay is the number one reason for children aged between five to nine being admitted to hospital. Oral decay causes children real pain as well trouble with eating, sleeping, and socialising, all of which can lead to significant school absence.

That's why I'm happy to see the supervised toothbrushing contract for the Big Brush Club being rolled out across the Duchy, to all primary schools in Cornwall, and some targeted nurseries. This means than thousands of primary and nursery school children in Cornwall, aged three to five, can now access a programme to encourage them to brush their teeth twice a day and learn about wider oral self-care such as a good diet and a reduction in sugar intake.

And it's not only the children and parents who benefit. Treating dental disease in children can cost the NHS around £1,600 per person. Every £1 spent on supervised toothbrushing is expected to save £3 in avoided treatment costs, amounting to over £34-million over the next five years that can instead be spent on treating other patients.

Getting children to create good habits is one thing but we're still struggling with dentistry for adults. Recent data showed more than 49,000 young people under 19 were admitted to hospital for tooth extraction in the financial year ending 2024. That's a damning record for the Conservative Government. Patients and NHS staff alike were let down by generations of underinvestment and failure to reform by the previous Government, which hollowed out local services. Nowhere was this more apparent than in NHS dentistry where it has become impossible for some patients to get any kind of appointment at all.

Recently it was revealed that the new patient premium, introduced by the Tories as part of the dental recovery plan published in February 2024, cost £88-million. Crucially it delivered nothing for patients.

Labour delivered on our manifesto commitment to roll out 700,000 extra urgent appointments across the country in April, with 35,000 urgent NHS dental appointments available to patients across the South West, with 10,910 in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

We are also recruiting new dentists to areas that need them most and will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focusing on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists. We need to move quickly to reform the dental contract with the NHS and start increasing the number of appointments available.

In the South West we are particularly bad. Ten per cent fewer dental practices take on new adult NHS patients in rural areas as opposed to urban areas. Cornwall deserves far more than the deterioration of services that we have witnessed over the past decade. I campaigned hard on this issue before the general election and I will keep campaigning until everyone in my constituency has access to NHS dentistry.