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 help prevent tooth decay in children.

Tooth decay can be almost entirely prevented by reducing the amount and frequency of the consumption of sugar in food and drink and providing adequate exposure to fluoride. In England, local authorities have a statutory duty to assess needs, develop oral health strategies and commission the appropriate oral health improvement programmes. We have published evidence-based toolkits for local service commissioners, which are available at the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/improving-oral-health-supervised-tooth-brushing-programme-toolkit

We intend to go further with prevention measures for babies and children and will publish a Dentistry Recovery Plan shortly.