Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps are being taken to (a) retain and (b) train and recruit dentists.

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, including steps to support the dental workforce.

NHS England negotiated amendments to the NHS dental contract to ensure dentists are remunerated more fairly for providing complex treatment within current Band 2 treatments, and enabling better use of skill mix in NHS dental practices.

We have recently simplified the General Dental Council's (GDC) legislative framework for the registration of international dentists and dental care professionals to increase the dental workforce. The legislative changes came into force on 8 March 2023.

Training programmes for healthcare professionals must meet the standards set by the regulatory body for their profession. The standard of training for dentists is the responsibility of the GDC who set the outcome standards expected at undergraduate level and approve courses and Higher Education Institutions to write and teach the curricula content that enables their students to meet the regulators outcome standards

We will announce our plan for further reform of the NHS dental system shortly. To support the workforce as a whole, we have commissioned NHS England to develop a long-term workforce plan for the NHS workforce for the next 15 years to ensure that we have the right numbers of staff with the right skills to transform and deliver high quality services fit for the future.