Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps she is taking to increase the number of NHS dentists in Shropshire.

In September we announced Our Plan for Patients, which outlines the initial steps we are taking to meet oral health needs and increase access to dental care, including in Shropshire.

The Plan includes improvements to ensure dentists are renumerated fairly for more complex work, allowing greater flexibility to reallocate resources and to utilise dentists with greater capacity to deliver NHS treatment, whilst enabling full use of the dental team. The Plan also includes streamlining processes for registration of overseas dentists so they can more swiftly start to treat NHS patients; and holding the local ICS to account for dentistry provision. In addition, Health Education England are also delivering a programme to reform dental education which will help recruitment and retention of dental professionals, including NHS dentists and other dental care professionals.