Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the gross annual budget was for NHS dental services before deductions for (a) underspends and (b) underperformance for each year from 2010-11 to the latest year for which data is available.

Whilst data for dental budgets in prior years is not held centrally, we currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes, and will ringfence the funding in 2024/25. We will issue guidance to integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly, through NHS England’s 2024/25 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with and collect monthly returns from all ICBs, to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget.