Tories say NHS dental bills rising alarmingly

LONDON (Reuters), Aug 14 - Patients are now paying an average of 35% more for their National Health Service (NHS) dental treatment than they were when Labour came to power in 1997, the Conservative Party said on Thursday.

In 1997/98, patients spent 389 million pounds on NHS treatment, but that had risen to 475 million pounds by 2006/7, the opposition party calculated.

In total, people have spent 4.5 billion pounds on NHS dental charges under Labour, Shadow Health Minister Mike Penning said.

Two million people in England lost access to an NHS dentist during this time, the Tories said, despite a pledge by then Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999 that everyone would have access within two years.

"Labour's dental legacy is one of shameful failure," Penning said.

"Not only are people now paying 35% more when they see their NHS dentist, but Labour's botched policies mean that millions of hard-working families have completely lost access to affordable dental care."

A Department of Health spokesman disputed the statistics saying they were "misleading and did not compare like with like." He said numbers of NHS patients were up by 500,000.

He also said they did not take into account inflation.

"The number of adults registered with an NHS dentist has actually increased by over half a million if you compare the two years leading up to March 1997 to the two years leading up to March 2006," he said.

"Our reforms and total investment of over 2 billion pounds in NHS dentistry is allowing new NHS dental practices to expand and open with dental companies as well as individual dentists bidding to provide more NHS dental services around the country."

He added: "In 1996/97, patient charges were 29% of total dental expenditure where as in 2006/07 this had fallen to 21%."

Last Updated: 2008-08-14 12:00:16 -0400 (Reuters Health)

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