Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what plans his Department has to address the potential shortages of dentists.
The interim NHS People Plan commits to addressing shortages within the dental workforce. Through the Advancing Dental Care Education and Training Review programme, Health Education England is considering how dental and oral health needs can be best met through changes to the workforce. This includes exploring opportunities for flexible training pathways to improve retention. NHS England and NHS Improvement are also working with the profession and the British Dental Association to assess how the whole dental team may be better utilised to enable dentists to free up capacity and increase access.