Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support dentists to take on new NHS patients.

In July 2022, we announced a package of dental system improvements to increase access for National Health Service dental patients and make NHS dentistry more attractive to practices.

NHS England has negotiated amendments to the NHS dental contract with the British Dental Association and other stakeholders. These improvements, which came into effect in November 2022, include enabling commissioning of up to 110% of contracted Units of Dental Activity to increase NHS care; fairer remuneration for practices providing complex treatment within current Band 2 treatments; and removing barriers around use of staff skills mix in NHS dentistry teams.

We will announce our plan for further reform of the NHS dental system later this year. It will outline a number of additional actions across a number of areas to support and recover NHS dentistry.