Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent progress has been made on increasing access to NHS dentistry.

National Health Service dentists throughout the country have been asked to maximise safe throughput to meet as many prioritised needs as possible, focussing first on urgent care and vulnerable groups followed by overdue appointments. In addition, NHS England and NHS Improvement has provided a flexible commissioning toolkit to local commissioners to help focus the available capacity on those that need it most and to reduce oral health inequalities.

For the longer term, the Department has asked NHS England and NHS Improvement to work with the British Dental Association to build on the learning from the dental contract reform programme. Through this work, the Department is seeking to bring forward implementable proposals that address the key challenges facing the delivery of NHS dentistry and improve patient access.