Tory dental plan runs out of gas

Key promise 'likely to be unreliable'

- MARTIN BAGOT

THE Tories' much-derided NHS dentistry "recovery plan" came unstuck yesterday as a senior minister was grilled by MPs.

Stumbling primary care minister Andrea Leadsom was forced to admit its key promise to deliver millions more NHS dentist appointments "has a high likelihood of not being reliable".

She made the admission during an appearance before the Health Select Committee about the collapse in access to NHS dentists.

The Government's pledge was to provide an extra 2.5 million appointments, or 1.5 million courses of treatment when this would involve more than one appointment - despite coming with no extra funding.