Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of reforming the overseas registration exam for dentists.

The Government has already made legislative changes that give the General Dental Council (GDC) greater flexibility in expanding the registration routes for international applicants, and improving its international registration processes, including how it operates the Overseas Registration Exam (ORE). This legislation came into force in March 2023, and new rules for the ORE made by the GDC under these reforms come into effect this month.

We welcomed the GDC’s announcements that sittings of the ORE part one from August 2023 to the end of 2024, will have triple the previous capacity, and that an additional sitting of the ORE part two will be provided in 2024. Together, these steps have created more than 1300 additional places across the two ORE parts.