Declares concern for the lack of NHS dental appointments available in rural areas.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urge the Government to increase training places for new dentists, reform NHS dental contracts and make it easier to recruit experienced dentists to fill dental vacancies in rural areas.
And the petitioners remain, etc.—[Presented by Tim Farron, Official Report, 9 January 2024; Vol. 743, c. 271.]
[P002895]
Observations from TheParliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Dame Andrea Leadsom):
The Government acknowledge that there are areas of the country that are experiencing recruitment and retention issues and the Government are taking steps to address the workforce challenges across the country. We are making progress in increasing the workforce—there were 1,352 more dentists doing NHS work in 2022-23 than in 2010-11.
NHS England and integrated care boards are aware of the particular challenges in rural areas of England and are working with local dentists to enable practices to take on more NHS patients.
We recently published our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry in England which will make dental services faster, simpler and fairer for patients and will fund around 2.5 million additional appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of dental treatment. New dental vans will bring dental care to our most isolated communities and “golden hello” incentives will encourage dentists into under-served areas. We will decide on locations in the coming months and we will make sure we focus on the areas in greatest need.
We invest £3 billion each year to deliver NHS dentistry and £200 million will be provided to support our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry.
Alongside this, we are recruiting more dentists than ever, with a 40% increase in dentistry training places as part of our NHS long-term workforce plan—the largest expansion in dentistry training places on record. We wish to undertake this expansion in a way that is targeted to improve provision in areas of the country where it is most needed.
We are exploring whether a tie-in would ensure that dentists spend a greater proportion of their time delivering NHS dental care. We will launch a consultation on this policy later in spring.
We also want to ensure that the process of achieving registration to practise dentistry in the UK is as efficient and fast as possible, while remaining a robust safeguard for patient protection. We have launched a consultation on provisional registration, which would allow an overseas-qualified dentist to practise in any dental setting under the supervision of a dentist who has full registration on the General Dental Council’s dentists register.
State-funded healthcare within the United Kingdom but outside England is a devolved matter and the responsibility of the devolved Governments.