Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what assessment he has made of the potential impact of NHS dental funding levels on the recruitment and retention of dentists providing NHS care.

Since July 2024, the Government has been rebuilding a broken National Health Service dentistry system. We have delivered 1.8 million more dental treatments and reduced the underspend from £392 million in 2023/24 to just £36 million in 2024/25, maximising the treatments provided for taxpayers’ money.

We have brought into force a package of reforms this year to address some of the most pressing issues that dentists and dental teams have been experiencing, including rewarding them more fairly for treating patients with urgent and complex needs.

Strengthening the workforce is key to our ambitions to rebuild NHS dentistry. We are increasing the supply of dentists through a sustained expansion of 50 new dental school places and an increase in exams to allow 2,000 more internationally qualified dentists to practise in the United Kingdom.