Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the proportion of NHS dental clinics that will not be able to meet the 45 per cent of their pre-pandemic units of dental activity target during the January 2021 lockdown in (a) England and (b) the North West.

No such assessment has been made.

NHS England and NHS Improvement recognise that there may be exceptional circumstances when the 45% activity target may not be deliverable and so National Health Service commissioners will use discretion to make exceptions in these cases. In addition, where a practice under-delivers by up to 4%, they can carry this forward into the next financial year.