Party Political Conferences: Dental Update for September
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- Published: Monday, 08 September 2025 09:42
- Written by Peter Ingle
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While many may be enjoying the on off heatwaves this summer, the serious political geeks will be busy preparing for the highlight of their year, the annual party conferences. The major political parties will be holding their big annual autumn meetings, starting with Labour at the end of September.
Dentistry has become a fertile political battleground since the pandemic with talk of dental deserts becoming commonplace, along with tales of DIY extractions, and lengthy queues for appointments.
Researchers and speechwriters will be looking for an angle and trying to create a message that will connect with the wider public. Here then, is a GDPUK snapshot of UK dentistry from a week in the summer of 2025.
A government that wants to be on good terms with big business will no doubt be delighted to use research form Haleon, the name behind Sensodyne and Corsodyl. Though as summarised in BDJ Team, the study may not make happy ministerial reading. It showed that 75% of UK adults were not regularly seeing a dental care professional, roughly equating to around 41 million people. Dental teams thought that the nation’s oral health is declining, with 64% identifying a worsening of oral health in the last 12 months. At least the 28% who doubted that their patients have a firm grasp on basic dental hygiene, will be pleased by the promised expansion of supervised toothbrushing programmes.
The Northern Echo carried a good news, bad news, item about dentistry. County Durham, had long been described as a “dental desert” after research showed no practices in the county were accepting new NHS patients. Then a practice in Chester le Steet, ‘shockingly’ opened their books to appointments, with a social media posting on Wednesday July 9th.
Due to the lack of access across the county, the news soon spread and Facebook users rushed to get an appointment. That good news was soon somewhat overshadowed by the practice confirming that they had said they “had some space for new NHS patients” but that they then had to revert to offering a waiting list place after just four hours. The practice added: “We aren’t accepting new patients now, because we did take on quite a few in that period, but when we do, we will let the public know by our social media.”
For those opposition parties keen to present a narrative of over regulation and death by asphyxiation from red tape, the BDJ provided a gloomy item on the rise of defensive dentistry. Examining perceptions and experiences amongst GDPs in primary care, it looked at this now accepted, but ill defined, influence on the UK dental scene.
Three main themes were identified: the sense of fear; practising the ‘art of avoidance’ with certain patients and, or, procedures, and the overall impact on the profession.
The study observed that GDPs unanimously recognised defensive practice as being carried out for self-protection rather than the interests of patients. The reasons for this approach included fear of litigation with or without the added grief of investigation by the GDC. These concerns have risen in recent years due to increased public awareness of litigation, and loss of public trust. The participants reported stress, low morale and deskilling as outcomes of practising defensively.
If any of the conference crowds are interested in the future of dentistry beyond political point scoring, they might keep an eye on the financial pages. The same July week that saw the stories above, delivered an £800 million deal for corporate MyDentist, as its ownership was passed between private equity firms. Bridgepoint, one of the world’s largest operators bought a majority interest from Palomon Capital Partners, after their four years of stewardship. With over 500 practices, and more than 2,500 surgeries nationwide, MyDentist is the UK’s largest dental provider by revenue, practices, and clinicians. Indeed a wily political operator might conclude that government could make faster progress negotiating with a handful of PE firms, than a GDPC answerable to thousands of members.
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