Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will allocate NHSE dentistry budget underspend to Integrated Care Boards in 2023-24 for the provision of NHS dental services for children.

NHS England is responsible for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population. Many of these functions will transfer to integrated care boards (ICBs) from April 2023.

We have assessed the merits of ringfencing National Health Service dental funding provisions. NHS England has provided guidance for ICBs that requires dental funding to be ringfenced, with any unused resources re-directed to improve NHS dental access in the first instance. A schedule setting out the dental ringfence has been issued to ICBs. NHS England’s 2023/24 revenue finance and contracting guidance, which provides more detail, is available via the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/2023-24-revenue-finance-and-contracting-guidance/