The DDU is proud to serve as the voice of dental professionals in Westminster, and to make sure the views of the profession are heard by those who make decisions affecting our industry.

Public Accounts Committee inquiry

In January, we submitted written evidence to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)'s inquiry into 'Fixing NHS Dentistry'. The PAC is one of the oldest and most prestigious committees in parliament and seeks to scrutinise the government's financial accounts and the value for money of public spending.

In our submission, we raised a number of issues that directly impact you, our members. These include clinical negligence costs, and specifically the introduction of a system of fixed recoverable costs (FRC) for clinical negligence claims valued up to £25,000.

At present, most personal injury claims have an FRC system, which would result in a set amount of legal costs that can be claimed by the winning party from the losing party in litigation. However, this does not apply in clinical negligence claims.

Our evidence to the PAC argued that implementing an FRC system for these cases would help improve access to NHS dentistry by reducing the indemnity and insurance costs faced by dental professionals, thereby making NHS work more appealing to a greater number of dental professionals.

FTP and wellbeing

We also highlighted two other issues in our submission to the PAC that we know are of significant importance to our members – namely fitness to practise reform and supporting the welfare of dentists.

We highlighted that the Professional Standards Authority's Monitoring Reports for the GDC in 2022/23 showed it is taking a median case over 140 weeks to proceed from receipt to final hearing. We emphasised the impact this is having on dental professionals, and why there is an urgent need to reform the regulator and ensure timelier responses.

In relation to the wellbeing of dental professionals, we outlined the member surveys we have undertaken over the past few years that highlight the levels of burnout amongst the profession and a desire for many to reduce their hours.

We emphasised that these figures were not anomalous, and that we believe this larger trend underlines the need for continued funding of programmes that help dental professionals at risk of burnout, such as NHS Practitioner Health.

APPG for Healthcare Workers

Outside of the committee submission, we have continued our work to raise the interests of our members in parliament.

We recently provided a briefing to peers in the House of Lords in advance of a question on the topic of 'NHS dentistry', which served to highlight the survey findings mentioned above and our policy proposals for addressing this and clinical negligence in relation to dentistry.

Moving forward, alongside providing other briefings like this, we will also be giving a presentation to the newly established All-Party Parliamentary Group for Healthcare Workers on the challenges currently facing dentistry at present, highlighting the concerns of our members and starting discussions on what steps can be taken to address these issues.

The MDU - the DDU's parent organisation - is secretariat of this group, which ideally positions us to represent the views of our members to an audience of parliamentarians.

The last few months have notably busy for the DDU, and we fully intend to build on the momentum we have developed to ensure your views are heard by decision makers.