Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to increase access to NHS dental appointments in North Cornwall constituency.

The Government plans to tackle the challenges patients face when trying to access National Health Service dental care with a rescue plan to provide 700,000 more urgent dental appointments, and by recruiting new dentists to areas that need them most.

To rebuild dentistry in the long term and increase access to NHS dental care, the Government will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists. The Cornwall and Isles of Scilly Integrated Care Board (ICB) has a number of measures in place to increase access to NHS dental appointments, including:

- commissioning over 356 additional urgent dental care appointments each week across the South West, with 45 of these weekly appointments available in Cornwall;

- commissioning additional stabilisation sessions with eight practices, providing 125 appointments each week in Cornwall;

- setting up a dental helpline to help people access urgent or stabilisation advice; and

- setting up an innovative access pilot project in Cornwall that supports the most vulnerable to see an NHS dentist.