Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to the study entitled Evaluation of water fluoridation scheme in Cumbria: the CATFISH prospective longitudinal cohort study published in Public Health Research in November 2022, if his Department will commission a long-tern study into the impact of water fluoridation on levels in children of (a) fluorosis, (b) obesity and (c) autism.

The Department funds research on health and social care through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR welcomes funding applications for research into any aspect of human health including the impact of water fluoridation in adults and children. The usual practice of the NIHR is not to ring-fence funds for expenditure on particular topics. We monitor the effects of the water fluoridation arrangements on the health of the populations served by schemes and publish a report every four years. The latest report, published in 2022, supports earlier findings and wider evidence that water fluoridation, at levels recommended in the United Kingdom, is a safe and effective public health measure to reduce dental decay and inequalities in dental health.