Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if she will take steps to establishing mutual recognition schemes for dental qualifications with other countries; and if she will make an estimate of the potential impact of mutual recognition schemes on the average time taken to recruit dentists from overseas.

The General Dental Council (GDC) is the independent regulator of dentistry and dental care professionals practising in the United Kingdom. Only dentists and dental care professionals registered with the GDC can legally practise dentistry in the UK. Currently, to be entered into the dentists register, an individual must satisfy the GDC’s requirements and either: have received their qualifications from a recognised UK dental school; hold recognised qualifications in dentistry from the European Economic Area or Switzerland; hold recognised qualifications in dentistry obtained before 1 January 2001 from certain overseas universities; or pass either the Overseas Registration Exam run by the GDC, or the License in Dental Surgery run by the Royal College of Surgeons.

In March 2023, we introduced legislation that gives the GDC greater flexibility in expanding the registration routes for international applicants, and improving its international registration processes. This includes enabling the GDC to broaden the ways in which it can assess additional overseas qualifications to determine if they are sufficient for registration as a dentist.

On 16 February 2024, we launched a consultation on introducing further legislation that would give the GDC powers to provisionally register overseas-qualified dentists who have not yet met the GDC’s requirements for full registration. Under these proposals, holders of provisional registration would be able to practise dentistry in the UK for a limited time under the supervision of a fully registered dentist, whilst they are seeking to meet the GDC’s requirements for full registration.