Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of routine dental appointments that have been missed as a result of the covid-19 outbreak in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England; what assessment he has made of the impact of missing regular dental check-ups on oral health in those areas; and what steps his Department is taking to increase access to routine dental appointments during the covid-19 outbreak in those areas.

No estimate has been made as this data is not collected in the format requested.

Dental practices have been asked to meet as many prioritised needs as possible, focussing first on urgent care and vulnerable groups followed by overdue appointments. NHS England has also provided a flexible commissioning toolkit to local commissioners to help focus the available capacity on those that need it most and to reduce oral health inequalities. In the Midlands extra capacity was commissioned by the local National Health Service from 8 January to 31 March 2021, through additional sessions at weekends with further commissioning being considered to increase access.