Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what recent assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of the provision of dental services in (a) Kingston Upon Hull North constituency and (b) the areas covered by (i) Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and (ii) Humber and North Yorkshire Integrated Care System.

From 1 April 2023, the responsibility for commissioning primary care dentistry to meet the needs of the local population has been delegated to integrated care boards (ICBs) across England. NHS England has published an Assurance Framework which sets out its approach to providing assurance that commissioning functions are carried out safely and effectively by ICBs.

In September 2022, we announced ‘Our plan for patients’, which outlines how we will meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care across England. These will increase access to National Health Service dentistry whilst making the NHS dental contract more attractive to dental practices. The changes we have implemented include a contractual requirement for NHS dentists to keep their NHS.UK profiles up to date to make it easier for patients to seek treatment; and enabling practices to over-deliver on their NHS contract to deliver more NHS care.

We are working on further reforms which will be announced later this year.