To ask the Minister of Health (i) for his assessment of the trend in the number of dentists providing NHS treatment; and (ii) what steps he is taking to ensure there is adequate provision of NHS dental care.

Information is not held on dental practices and dentists that are currently accepting new Health Service (HS) patients or if they have any self-imposed limits on HS patient registrations. Information is however available on the number of active dental contracts, where dentists have entered an arrangement with the Department to provide HS dental services.

Data provided by the Business Services Organisation shows that since 2016/17 there has been an increase in the number of dentists who accepted at least one new HS patient. There has however been a slight fall in this number since 2019/20 (see below table).

The absence of any new HS patient registration in-year does not necessarily mean that the dentist is not currently accepting new HS patients.

The Department has made unprecedented investment into the industry in order to maintain the provision of HS dentistry, with over £76m being paid to independent General Dental Practitioners over the past two years in return for increasing levels of activity. However, given the pressures of the pandemic, it is to be expected that some practices have found their businesses unsustainable and have either had to close, or seek more profitable options.

Further support has been committed for the first half of 2022/23, with dental fees being enhanced by 25% as part of the Rebuilding Support Scheme (RSS), to reflect the ongoing pandemic pressures practices are facing. This investment has been supplemented by an additional £6.5m made available to practices via Revenue Grant Schemes in 2020/21 and 2021/22. This funding is designed to improve patient safety, practice efficiency and improve the resilience of practices in order to mitigate against future transmission of aerosol based respiratory diseases, and other infectious diseases.

Recent easing of Infection Prevention and Control procedures within all health care settings, along with the introduction of the RSS in April 2022 has already resulted in an increase capacity within practices from 58% to 76% of pre-covid levels. This is expected to continue to improve over the coming months, as dentists work through their backlogs.

The Department is also developing options to increase the availability of appointments for non-registered patients who have urgent and emergency treatments needs. Patient registration timeframes have also been extended since the beginning of the pandemic to ensure that patients registration status is unaffected by any difficulties encountered in attending.

In addition, Urgent Dental Care Centres continue to provide cover for patients with dental emergencies who cannot be seen in practice, and these centres will be reverting to Relief of Dental Pain Clinics, with increased capacity, in the coming weeks.