Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what additional funding is being made available for NHS dentistry to support the additional payments for emergency treatment announced on 15 December 2025.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is implementing payment and quality reforms to the dental contract from April 2026, which will support dentists to prioritise those with the greatest need, shifting care away from clinically unnecessary check-ups and instead incentivising more complex and urgent care.
The 2026 reforms are funded within the existing National Health Service dentistry budget, and in 2024/25 we invested approximately £3.7 billion on primary care dentistry.
We want to ensure that every penny we allocate for dentistry is spent on dentistry, and that the ringfenced dental budget is spent on the patients who need it most.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to help reduce instances of type 2 diabetes.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government is committed to tackling preventable ill health, such as type 2 diabetes, head-on and at the earliest opportunity. Excess weight and obesity are key risk factors for type 2 diabetes and we are taking decisive action on the obesity crisis, easing the strain on the National Health Service and creating the healthiest generation of children ever.
We have delivered on our commitment to restrict junk food advertising on television and online and are delivering a ban on the sale of high-caffeine energy drinks to under 16 year olds. We are limiting volume price promotions such as “buy one get one free” on less healthy food and drink and have put in place a nationally standardised Behavioural Support for Obesity Prescribing service to ensure weight loss medicines are delivered safely and effectively. We will also double the number of patients able to access the NHS Digital Weight Management programme.
In addition, we continue to support the Healthier You NHS Diabetes Prevention Programme (NHS DPP), which has offered support to over 2.4 million people who are at risk of type 2 diabetes since its establishment in 2016. The NHS DPP is highly effective and has been found to reduce attendee’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes by 37% compared to those who did not attend.
We continue to deliver the NHS Health Check, a core component of England’s cardiovascular disease prevention programme, which aims to detect those at risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and kidney disease aged between 40 and 74 years old.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his Department’s policy to introduce mandatory NHS testing for paediatric type 1 diabetes.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body responsible for providing guidance and quality standards on the treatment and care of diabetes in England. The NICE guideline NG18, for type 1 and 2 diabetes, provides clinical guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment, and care of children and young people. Children with suspected type 1 diabetes should receive a blood test that checks blood glucose, or sugar, levels.
NG18 recommends that children and young people with suspected type 1 diabetes are referred immediately, on the same day, to a multidisciplinary paediatric diabetes team with the competencies needed to confirm diagnosis and provide immediate care.
NHS England has published the RightCare toolkit which supports good quality diabetes care for children and young adults and includes guidance on timely and accurate diagnosis.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve the diagnosis of type 1 diabetes.
Answered by Ashley Dalton - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) is the independent body responsible for providing guidance and quality standards on the treatment and care of diabetes in England. The NICE guideline NG18, for type 1 and 2 diabetes, provides clinical guidelines for the diagnosis, treatment, and care of children and young people. Children with suspected type 1 diabetes should receive a blood test that checks blood glucose, or sugar, levels.
NG18 recommends that children and young people with suspected type 1 diabetes are referred immediately, on the same day, to a multidisciplinary paediatric diabetes team with the competencies needed to confirm diagnosis and provide immediate care.
NHS England has published the RightCare toolkit which supports good quality diabetes care for children and young adults and includes guidance on timely and accurate diagnosis.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce the impact of emergency dental treatment on NHS hospitals.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The responsibility for commissioning primary care services, including National Health Service dentistry, to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to integrated care boards (ICBs) across England.
We have asked ICBs to commission extra urgent dental appointments to make sure that patients with urgent dental needs can get the treatment they require, therefore reducing the need for patients to go to Accident and Emergency for dental treatment unless necessary. ICBs have been making extra appointments available from April 2025.
Appointments are available across the country, with specific expectations for each region. These appointments are more heavily weighted towards those areas where they are needed the most.
We are committed to delivering fundamental reform of the dental contract before the end of this Parliament. As a first step, on 16 December we published the Government’s response to the public consultation on interim improvements to the NHS dental contract. The changes will be introduced from April 2026. These reforms will put patients with greatest need first, incentivising urgent care and complex treatments. More information is available from the GOV.UK website, at the following link:
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has considered strengthening the licensing requirements of the General Dental Council to improve access to dentistry for children, as recommended in a recent Policy Exchange report.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The General Dental Council (GDC) is the independent regulator of dentistry in the United Kingdom. The GDC sets the standards that must be met by domestic and international applicants wishing to be added to the UK dental register. As an independent regulator, it would be for the GDC to determine whether any changes are required to its standards in response to the Policy Exchange report’s recommendations.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to tackle “dental deserts” where very few NHS dentists are available.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government acknowledges the challenges that National Health Service dental patients are facing in accessing a dentist in particular areas of the country, and we are taking action to improve this. Integrated care boards are recruiting posts through the Golden Hello scheme, which will see dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in underserved areas for three years; and as announced in our 10-Year Health Plan, we will make it a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practice in the NHS for a minimum period, intended to be at least three years. That will mean more NHS dentists, more NHS appointments and better oral health.
We are committed to delivering fundamental reform of the dental contract before the end of this Parliament. As a first step, we published the Government’s response to the public consultation on shorter term improvements to the NHS dental contract on 16 December 2025. The changes will be introduced from April 2026. These reforms will put patients with the greatest needs first while incentivising urgent care and complex treatments. Further information is available at the following link:
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to encourage more dentists to provide NHS dentistry.
Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The Government acknowledges the challenges that National Health Service dental patients are facing in accessing a dentist in particular areas of the country, and we are taking action to improve this. Integrated care boards are recruiting posts through the Golden Hello scheme, which will see dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in underserved areas for three years; and as announced in our 10-Year Health Plan, we will make it a requirement for newly qualified dentists to practice in the NHS for a minimum period, intended to be at least three years. That will mean more NHS dentists, more NHS appointments and better oral health.
We are committed to delivering fundamental reform of the dental contract before the end of this Parliament. As a first step, we published the Government’s response to the public consultation on shorter term improvements to the NHS dental contract on 16 December 2025. The changes will be introduced from April 2026. These reforms will put patients with the greatest needs first while incentivising urgent care and complex treatments. Further information is available at the following link:
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many patients received NHS electroshock therapy in every year since 2010 in (a) England and (b) Romford constituency.
Answered by Zubir Ahmed - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department of Health and Social Care)
In line with National Institute for Clinical Excellence’s guidelines, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is used in current United Kingdom clinical practice as a treatment option for individuals with depressive illness, catatonia and mania, and is occasionally used to treat schizophrenia. The following table shows the number of patients who received National Health Service ECT in England every year since 2016:
Financial year | Number of patients receiving ECT in England |
2016/2017 | 346 |
2017/2018 | 441 |
2018/2019 | 326 |
2019/2020 | 572 |
2020/2021 | 464 |
2021/2022 | 571 |
2022/2023 | 609 |
2023/2024 | 717 |
2024/2025 | 955 |
Source: NHS England.
Notes:
Data is not available prior to 2016. This data is not available at a constituency level, and, although the data is collected at local authority level, NHS England has advised that there were no reported electroshock therapy contacts for patients in the Havering Local Authority during this period.
Asked by: Andrew Rosindell (Reform UK - Romford)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 6 November 2025 to Question 86606, what steps he has taken to ensure that citizens of British Overseas Territories have access to NHS services whilst resident in the UK.
Answered by Karin Smyth - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
National Health Service care is provided free at the point of use to people who are ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom. Being ordinarily resident broadly means living in the UK on a lawful and properly settled basis. People who are not considered ordinarily resident in the UK are required to pay for healthcare in England unless an exemption applies.
If citizens of British Overseas Territories are assessed as being ordinarily resident in the UK, they are able to access NHS care free at the point of use.