Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to promote preventative-focused, patient-centred dental care.

The Department will work with the British Dental Association and NHS England and NHS Improvement to design proposals that address the key challenges facing the delivery of National Health Service dentistry and encourage a more preventative approach to dentistry.

In addition, Public Health England has published an evidence-based toolkit, ‘Delivering Better Oral Health’ for dental teams to provide preventive advice and treatment for their patients. Work is underway to review the toolkit and an updated version will be published in the autumn. The toolkit is available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/delivering-better-oral-health-an-evidence-based-toolkit-for-prevention