Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of ringfencing NHS Dental funding provisions.

NHS England is responsible for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population. Many of these functions will transfer to integrated care boards (ICBs) from April 2023.

We have assessed the merits of ringfencing National Health Service dental funding provisions. NHS England has provided guidance for ICBs that requires dental funding to be ringfenced, with any unused resources re-directed to improve NHS dental access in the first instance. A schedule setting out the dental ringfence has been issued to ICBs. NHS England’s 2023/24 revenue finance and contracting guidance, which provides more detail, is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/2023-24-revenue-finance-and-contracting-guidance/