Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, if he will make it a requirement that dentistry practices update their information on the NHS Choices website.

NHS Digital has been working with NHS England, the Department, the Advertising Standards Authority and Healthwatch, to improve the information available to the public on dentistry on NHS Choices. The first tranche of improvements went live earlier this month. These included action to encourage practices to regularly update their profiles and, in particular, information on whether the practice is taking on new patients, which now has a mandatory 90 day review cycle. If this information is not updated or verified as still correct within a 90 day period, it will be temporarily removed from the site. Consideration continues to what further action could be taken to ensure information is updated regularly.