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Dental Services: Contracts

Question for Department of Health and Social Care

UIN 21950, tabled on 3 January 2025

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of reforming the NHS dental contract to (a) make appointments more accessible and (b) to tackle the backlog of people waiting for NHS dental appointments.

Answered on

8 January 2025

To rebuild dentistry in the long term, we will reform the dental contract, with a shift to focus on prevention and the retention of National Health Service dentists. There are no perfect payment systems and careful consideration needs to be given to any potential changes to the complex dental system so that we deliver a system better for patients and the profession.