Scottish Labour’s dental spokesperson Paul Sweeney MSP said: “It is alarming that there is still such a gap in oral health between children living in the most deprived areas of Scotland, compared to those in the least deprived areas.
“The wellbeing of our young people should not come down to a postcode lottery – but sadly, we know that one in three Scots are struggling to access dentists, especially in the poorest areas.
“Too many people are also being forced to fork out their savings on private dentistry as a result of the SNP’s rotten record in supporting the sector. This must change.
“Anas Sarwar is a former dentist, so this issue is personal to him. Scottish Labour will take steps to incentivise newly qualified dentists in areas where they are needed most, to ensure everyone is able to get help when they need it.”
- Since 2005, obvious decay experience has declined, although this downward trend appears to have plateaued since the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Oral health inequalities remain: in 2025, 71.4% of children living in the most socioeconomically deprived areas had no obvious decay experience, compared to 89.6% in the least deprived areas.
Meanwhile, John Swinney sparked a furious response after a “grandstanding” tweet about the first dental graduates in Malawi funded with £1.6m from Scottish taxpayers.
The First Minister is on a visit to the southern African nation, which he said had “just 40 dentists in 2016”. To address this, the Scottish Government is paying for dentistry school at Kamuzu University of Health Sciences.
But critics pointed out that Scotland has lost hundreds of dentists and thousands of people are no longer able to access NHS services. One person on X said a friend’s son had to travel from the Highlands to Glasgow to get treatment.
In a further twist, just hours after his tweet on Monday, Public Health Scotland released new figures showing that the percentage of Scottish children with tooth decay had increased for the first time in 20 years.
Scottish Conservative shadow health secretary Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP said: “This is grandstanding at its worst from John Swinney. On the SNP’s watch, Scotland has lost 300 dentists since 2020, recruitment is the worst it’s ever been and thousands of Scots have been left with no option but to raid their life savings and go private for treatment.
“Instead of addressing the dentistry crisis that his party created, John Swinney is spending his time and taxpayers’ money playing the global statesman – even though foreign affairs is reserved to the UK Government.
“While it’s great to see other countries making progress, John Swinney and his SNP colleagues need to drop the virtue-signalling and focus on fixing essential services in Scotland – like the NHS dentistry crisis.”
The Public Health Scotland figures show that 18.% of P7 children in Scotland had obvious signs of tooth decay in 2025, up from 18.1% in 2023. This is the first time since at least 2005 that the percentage has increased.
Dr Gulhane added: “John Swinney is busy boasting about the dental progress being made in Malawi, while failing to fix the dental crisis he’s created here. Instead of wasting taxpayers’ money playing the global statesman, he should get on with the day job.”.
Foreign aid is ‘morally, the right thing to do’
Since 2018, £1.6million has been invested by the Scottish Government in the MalDent Project, launched in 2018 to establish Malawi’s first Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree.