Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what assessment he has made of the implications for his policies on dental services of the British Dental Association's press release of 1 October 2017 on the number of dentists intending to leave NHS dentistry.
The Government is committed to supporting dentists and National Health Service dental services. NHS England is responsible for commissioning primary care dental services. It advises that it has not had any widespread reports of difficulty nationally in contracting dental providers to deliver NHS care.
In 2016/17, 3,847 more dentists worked in the NHS than were working in the NHS when the current contract started in 2006/ 2007.