Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department is taking steps to support the General Dental Council reduce the backlog in applicants waiting to sit the Overseas Registration Examination.

The capacity of the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE) is constrained by rules within the General Dental Council’s (GDC) legislative framework which includes prescriptive detail on the ORE content and structure. The department has worked with the GDC to develop and consult on legislative proposals to allow the regulator greater flexibility to amend its existing international registration processes and explore alternative registration pathways as it considers appropriate. It will be for the GDC, as an independent regulator, to decide how best to use the flexibility that these proposals allow but we understand that the GDC will consult on changes to how it operates the ORE. This would enable it to increase the number of dentists it can assess, potentially allowing overseas dentists to join its register more quickly.

The draft Order was debated in the House of Commons on 6 December 2022 and the House of Lords on 9 January 2023. Subject to the completion of the Parliamentary approvals process, we aim to introduce the legislative changes in February 2023.