Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what the level of underspend was for dentistry in each integrated care board in each year since 2015.

We currently invest more than £3 billion in National Health Service dental services each year. We are committed to protecting this funding for dentistry purposes, and will ringfence this funding in 2024 to 2025. We will issue guidance to the integrated care boards (ICBs) shortly, through NHS England’s 2024 to 2025 revenue finance and contracting guidance. To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to NHS dental care, NHS England will meet with, and collect monthly returns from, all ICBs, to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget. Data is not held centrally for dental budgets in prior years.