Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what discussions officials in his Department have had with representatives of NHS England North East and Yorkshire region on access to dentistry in County Durham.

We have had no specific discussions. However, NHS England and NHS Improvement have regular contact with regional commissioners to monitor and support the delivery of National Health Service dentistry. We allocated a further £50 million for NHS dentistry for the final quarter of 2021/22. Of this funding, £8.6 million was made available to the North East and Yorkshire region to support access to urgent dental care.