Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of publishing (a) dentistry and (b) other oral health statistics more frequently for the purpose of (i) analysing oral health and (ii) identifying appropriate interventions.
There are no plans to make such an assessment. In England, local authorities are responsible for assessing oral health needs, developing strategies and commissioning oral health improvement programmes for the local population. Dental and other oral health statistics can be used to assess such needs and the Department has published resources to support local authorities with commissioning evidence based oral health improvement programmes.