ELDERLY care home patients are facing a four-month wait for dental appointments, Conserv-atives claimed today.

South Dorset Tory parliamentary spokesman Ed Matts said elderly people faced "a distressing and demeaning" problem because a visiting NHS dental service was scrapped without warning a year ago.

But Dorset County Hospital's community dental department director Norman Martin said Tories were to blame as much as Labour for dental service problems and if he had a chance he would take the entire profession out of politicians' hands.

Mr Matts highlighted the local dental situation yesterday during a visit to the Montevideo care home in Weymouth with Tory shadow minister for health Tim Loughton.

Mr Matts said: "I am disgusted that these cutbacks have hit one of the most vulnerable groups in society, a group that is unable physically to protest about the way in which the Government continually overlooks them.

"Care home residents who are mobile can visit the dentist themselves. However, the less mobile, and particularly the mentally frail residents with their own teeth, can now only book an appointment in the outpatients' department at Dorset County Hospital following a referral from a GP and this takes up to four months. This is intolerable if the patient is in pain."

He added that this was not the end of the problem because some residents, unable to sit in a wheelchair, had to be stretchered, a difficulty compounded at the hospital dentist where there were no lifting aids.

Mr Matts said: "Ambulance staff who could possibly assist in this will only take residents to the hospital door as that is the limit of their responsibility. Also residents often have to wait a long time before being seen."

Care home manager Mary Williamson said the lack of a visiting dentist was a problem facing Montevideo and many other care homes in the area.

She added: "A dentist used to visit but then suddenly stopped. Now there is a three to four-month waiting list for a dental appointment."

Mr Loughton said there was a serious problem with dentistry throughout the whole population.

He added: "Elderly and less mobile people are clearly missing out and, given the ageing population, this is a mounting problem and an issue we need to look at much more carefully."

Mr Martin said: "Dental services have been in decline for many years, including under the Tories, whose 1992 Health Minister Baroness Hooper I personally talked to about that decline.

"The visiting dentist service was cut because we just didn't have the resources to fund it anymore.

"If it was up to me I would not just take dental services out of the hands of the politicians but the whole NHS as well. I would ideally like to see a service for the people which is not private."