Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of (a) providing free emergency dental checks to people who have not been able to see a dentist during the covid-19 outbreak and (b) enabling those appointments to be booked through the same systems that are used for booking a covid-19 vaccine.

We have no plans to do so. Almost half of all courses of treatment are delivered to patients who are fully or partly exempt from paying National Health Service dental charges.

NHS dental practices have been asked to meet as many prioritised needs as possible, focussing first on urgent care and vulnerable groups followed by overdue appointments. There are 718 urgent dental centres across England to support the provision of care during the pandemic. Patients are able to access urgent care from NHS dental practices or via NHS111.