LONDON, UK: Everyone in the UK should be able to access free, basic dental care, according to the Green Party’s new dental health policy. In the policy, the party claims that only half the UK population is provided with free dental healthcare and calls dentistry charges by the country's National Health Service (NHS) a ‘regressive tax’.

A spokesman for the party said: “Greens think it’s unfair that many poorer people including children are going without proper dental healthcare, while NHS money is wasted on botched privatisation schemes. Green Members of Parliament will fight for a dental health service for the UK that’s fair, free and effective.”

As for fluoridating the water to improve dental health, the Greens said this is not a viable solution and called it more like a ‘sticking plaster with side effects’.

“It’s unfair that less affluent populations are having mass medication foisted upon them as a cheap ‘sticking plaster solution’ instead of being provided with a proper dental health strategy, while health services are treated like profit-driven businesses rather than public services,” a spokesman said.

They claim that “mass medication of doubtful efficacy and potential side-effects is no substitute for a proper dental healthcare strategy. We need to be teaching new parents how to look after their toddlers’ teeth, and teaching young children from nursery onwards all about how to look after their own teeth properly. And in addition, we need everyone to have access to the right professional support, which means guaranteeing free access to an NHS dentist for everyone who wants it.”

The Green Party also states that getting access to an NHS dentist is difficult and there is wide variation across the country with between 55 per cent and 60 per cent of NHS practices not taking any new NHS patients. It is also concerned that less than half of the UK adult population and only around two thirds of children are visiting NHS dentists.