Health trust spends £700,000 teaching children to clean their teeth

Mark Wallace, a spokesman for the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "This is a huge amount of money spent on an initiative of questionable value.

"When people are struggling to find a dentist that has room for them, the NHS should be focusing on that not on doing things people can do for themselves.

"A big part of our current health crisis is down to the fact that personal responsibility has been taken away from people.

"We should have an NHS that expects people to buy their own toothbrushes but is willing to provide them with dentists when needed."