Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many new mobile dental vans he plans to introduce in Lincolnshire by the end of 2024.

The Government will 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 to recruit new dentists to areas that need them most. To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of NHS dentists.

We are clear that the dental recovery plan, Faster, simpler and fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, published on 7 February 2024, did not go far enough to improve access for NHS dentistry patients. As part of our ambitions for dentistry, we will review what elements of the recovery plan can be taken forward within NHS budgets, including on the proposals for dental vans.