Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of an increase in urgent care Units of Dental Activity on trends in the level of the provision of routine and preventative NHS dental care.

We recognise that urgent, routine, and preventative dental care is important and we are taking steps to address this.

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 quality and payment reforms to the National Health Service dental contract. The changes will be introduced from April 2026, and an impact assessment will be published. The proposals are intended to make it easier for those who need dental care and treatment by requiring all dental practices to provide an agreed amount of urgent and unscheduled care which is accessible to all who need it, irrespective of whether they have been to the practice before. Further information is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/nhs-dentistry-contract-quality-and-payment-reforms/outcome/government-response-to-consultation-on-nhs-dentistry-contract-quality-and-payment-reforms

We have invested £11 million in 147 local authorities in 2025/26, alongside an innovative partnership with Colgate-Palmolive, to rollout a national targeted supervised toothbrushing programme for three to five-year-olds. This will reach up to 600,000 children targeted in the 20% most deprived areas of England to reduce inequalities.