Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, with reference to his Department's publication entitled Our plan for patients, published on 22 September 2022, what progress his Department has made on increasing patient access to NHS dentistry services.

In November 2022, many of the dental system reforms announced in July 2022 and reiterated in ‘Our plan for patients’ came into force. These included splitting Band 2 payments to ensure dentists were more fairly remunerated for more complex dental treatment and allowing dentists to deliver up to 110% of their contracted dental activity to further improve access.

NHS England also reissued guidance on using dental care practitioners to the full extent of their professional skills and reiterated the guidance from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence that adults with good oral health do not need to see a dentist more often than every two years and a child every one year. There is also now a contractual requirement for all practices to keep their availability and whether or not they are accepting new National Health Service patients up to date on the NHS website which will help patients in accessing care. However, we know we need to do more and that is why we are working on additional reforms which we plan to announce shortly.