Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to (a) ensure that people can book NHS dental appointments and (b) remove covid-19 restrictions to ensure further appointments can take place.

We have sought to balance protecting staff and patients by setting minimum thresholds of National Health Service dental activity. The current threshold is 85%. Thresholds have reflected both attainment by the best performing practices and the impact of necessary infection prevention and control (IPC) procedures. The dentistry IPC guidance is based on national guidance for health and care settings, which is regularly updated to reflect the current evidence base. The latest version of the ‘COVID-19: infection prevention and control dental appendix’ was published in March 2022.

In addition, £50 million for NHS dentistry was made available in the last quarter of 2021/22 to provide access to dental appointments. NHS dentists have been asked to prioritise available capacity for urgent care, care for vulnerable groups and children followed by overdue appointments.