Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to increase recruitment of (a) healthcare and (b) dentistry professionals in rural areas.

We have launched a 10-Year Health Plan to reform the National Health Service. A central part of the plan will be our workforce and how we ensure we train and provide the staff, technology, and infrastructure the NHS needs to care for patients across our communities.

In summer 2025, we will publish a refreshed Long Term Workforce Plan to ensure the NHS has the right people across healthcare and dentistry, in the right places, with the right skills to deliver the care patients need when they need it.

To tackle the challenges for patients trying to access NHS dental care, the Government has launched a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments and recruit new dentists to areas that need them most.

Integrated care boards have started to recruit posts through the Golden Hello scheme. This recruitment incentive will see up to 240 dentists receiving payments of £20,000 to work in those areas that need them most for three years.