Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what her policy is on allowing local NHS commissioners to use flexible commissioning to improve the training of dentists, including clinicians from outside the UK.

NHS England is able to use flexible commissioning to convert units of dental activity to activity which focuses on priority areas, such as improving access to urgent care or targeting high risk patient groups. On 29 March 2021, NHS England released a flexible commissioning toolkit for regional commissioners to provide good practice which can be implemented locally. NHS England is monitoring the use of these measures.