Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment he has made of the potential impact of increasing (a) employer National Insurance Contributions and the (b) National Minimum Wage on dental practices in (i) Kent and (ii) Weald of Kent constituency.

We have made the necessary decisions to fix the foundations of the public finances in the Autumn Budget. Resource spending for the Department will be £22.6 billion more in 2025/26 than in 2023/24, as part of the Spending Review settlement. The employers’ National Insurance rise and National Minimum Wage rise was implemented in April 2025.

The National Health Service’s planning guidance for 2025/26 has now been published, and sets out the funding available to integrated care boards (ICBs), including the dental ringfence. Dental practices are businesses and decide how they operate themselves, providing they remain compliant with the appropriate regulations. It is up to dental practices to set employee pay and conditions.

The Government plans to tackle the challenges for patients trying to access NHS dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to the areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract with the sector, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.