Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government how many antibiotic prescriptions were issued by general dental practitioners in England in each of the last five years.

Information on the numbers of prescriptions for all antimicrobials, including antibiotics, issued by general dental practitioners is only available for the complete years of 2016 and 2017. In these years 3,198,411 and 2,977,302 National Health Service prescriptions were issued respectively.

From 2013 to 2017, the trend of antimicrobial prescriptions continued to decrease by 24.8%. The number of daily defined doses of antimicrobials per 1,000 inhabitants per day prescribed by dentists was 0.19 in 2013 and 0.16 in 2016; with an 8.3% decrease from 2016 to 2017. In the previous five years the proportions of daily defined doses of antibiotics issued by general dental practitioners out of all prescriptions, from hospital inpatients and outpatients, general medical practitioners and other community practitioners, were 4.8% in 2013, 4.8% in 2014, 4.5% in 2015, 4.6% in 2016, 5.2% in 2017.