Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will take steps to enable people who are ordinarily resident in England to have access to an NHS dental check-up and relevant treatment by the end of March 2024.

In September, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care. The plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver National Health Service treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. We have also enabled greater flexibility in commissioning NHS dentistry and ensuring patients can access current information on NHS dental services through NHS.UK and NHS 111.

These changes have been implemented through regulations which came into effect on 25 November. NHS England has published additional guidance for dentists and commissioners on these measures. NHS England is continuing discussions on further improvements involving the British Dental Association and other stakeholders and additional reforms are planned in 2023.