NHS Dentistry (on topic!)

[Clitheroekid]

I'd written this in response to the specific question as to whether the OP could sue the NHS for its failure to ensure the availability of a local NHS dentist, but when I went to post it the topic had been (understandably) locked.

I hope this will be an acceptable response (and for the avoidance of doubt it's not an invitation to open another discussion on the merits or otherwise of the NHS!)

I understand that the Government by statute are required to provide an NHS dentist to anyone who wants one.

The NHS Act 2006 appears to cover this. However, the duty (on a CCG) is to

A clinical commissioning group must arrange for the provision of the following to such extent as it considers necessary to meet the reasonable requirements of the persons for whom it has responsibility] —
(a)hospital accommodation,
(b)other accommodation for the purpose of any service provided under this Act,
(c)medical, dental, ophthalmic, nursing and ambulance services,......

I am reasonably confident that the words "to such extent as it considers necessary to meet the reasonable requirements.." would mean that it would be very difficult for any individual to claim compensation for not being able to access NHS dentistry provided the CCG has provided those services for some reasonable proportion of the population.

I profess no expertise in this area, but the following is taken from an article prepared by Landmark Chambers, a leading set of barristers in London. Sorry I can't provide a link to the full document.

The duties on commissioners under section 3 (1) of the NHS Act impose legal obligations on commissioners to make arrangements for services that can be accessed by patients that wish to do so. However, these duties do not create private law legal duties owed to individual patients. (A private law legal duty is one which can be the subject of a private law action for damages if it is alleged to have been breached).

The Secretary of State has no general private law duty of care to members of the public as potential patients and neither do NHS commissioning bodies. The legal duties under the NHS are fulfilled if health and social care services are made available to potential patients to meet with what the NHS commissioners consider to be their “reasonable requirements".

Thus the NHS Act does not impose legal duties on NHS bodies to provide healthcare to individual patients (save possibly in the case of patients who are sectioned under the Mental Health Act). The role of NHS commissioners and providers is to put services in place so they are accessible, if the public wish to avail themselves of those services.

So the bottom line is that a private individual has no right to sue the NHS for its alleged failure to supply health care.

[UncleEbenezer]

So the bottom line is that a private individual has no right to sue the NHS for its alleged failure to supply health care.

This begs questions of extending that principle.

Suppose the NHS has repeatedly and over an extended period promised health care, but always failed to deliver? The healthcare in question being a life-saving and time-critical cancer operation?

Absent the NHS promises, the patient would have gone private four months earlier, and might be alive and well today. Might anyone have the right to sue not over the failure to provide as such, but over the fatal promises that precluded the patient (who naturally believed in the NHS and had never used nor considered private healthcare) making alternative arrangements?