Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will make (a) an assessment of the potential merits of ring-fencing NHS dentistry funding and (b) an estimate of the potential impact of such ringfencing on the NHS budget.

National Health Service dentistry receives £3 billion of funding each year. We want to protect dental resources for dental care and prioritise access for patients, and have taken action, starting with our contract changes announced in July 2022 to ensure that the full dental budget made available each year is spent on delivering dental care.

From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to integrated care boards (ICBs) across England, along with the transfer of all funding. ICBs are responsible for having local processes in place to involve patient groups, and for undertaking oral health needs assessments, to identify areas of need and determine the priorities for investment.

NHS England provided guidance for the ICBs that requires dental allocations to be ringfenced in 2023/24, with any unused resources being re-directed to improve NHS dental access in the first instance, rather than being spent on other services. In November 2023, NHS England confirmed that where ICBs had not spent all of their allocation on improving access to dentistry, they would be able to retain any underspend and use this to balance their bottom line and any other pressures. ICBs will decide how to use any forecast underspend in line with this guidance. We are currently considering arrangements for 2024/25.