Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of dentistry services by the NHS.

NHS England has a legal duty to commission National Health Service dental services to meet the needs of the local population and to help patients who cannot find a local dentist.

Nationally, access to primary care dental services continues to increase. In the 24 month period ending 30 June 2017 22.2 million adults were seen by a dentist and in the 12 month period ending 30 June 2017 6.8 million children were seen by a dentist.

The January to March 2017 general practitioner patient survey results were published in July. These showed that 59% of adults questioned had tried to get an NHS dental appointment in the past two years and of those trying to get an appointment, 95% were successful.

Access has improved greatly over recent years but we know inequalities remain.

New ways of providing NHS dental services are being tested which aim to further improve oral health and increase access to NHS dental services, by preventing as well as treating disease. Alongside this, is NHS England’s recently launched Starting Well programme, which will run in 13 high needs areas to improve access to dental services for children known to be at greater risk of dental disease and who are not currently being seen by a dentist.