Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the financial sustainability of NHS dental services.

NHS England is continuing to fund dentists for their National Health Service contracts while the requirement to deliver a given amount of treatment is suspended. As part of the agreement dental practices will provide remote urgent advice, redeploy staff to provide urgent face to face care in one of the 550 urgent dental centres and redeploy other staff to support the wider NHS on COVID-19.

NHS England and NHS Improvement announced on 28 May that NHS dentistry outside urgent care centres will begin to restart from 8 June with the aim of increasing levels of service as fast as is compatible with maximising safety.