Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether it is his policy to ringfence dentistry budgets within the budgets of integrated care boards.

NHS England has issued guidance on the ringfencing of dental budgets for 2024/25 and will be reviewing for the next financial year. Ringfencing funding for future years will be reviewed as part of the Planning Guidance process. The guidance is available at the following link:

https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/PRN00888_Revenue-finance-and-contracting-guidance-for-2024-25_270324.pdf

To ensure compliance against this requirement, and to strengthen oversight of funding that is used to deliver access to National Health Service dental care, NHS England will meet with and collect monthly returns from all integrated care boards to establish current and planned spend against the ringfenced dental allocations budget.