Minister for Public Health (ASndrea Leadsom): On 7 February 2024
the government published our report: Faster, simpler and
fairer: our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry, to
accelerate the recovery of NHS dentistry from the COVID-19
pandemic. The plan will fund up to 2.5 million additional
appointments, or more than 1.5 million additional courses of
dental treatment and is already delivering with over 500 more
dental practices showing themselves as open to new patients as of
9 May. Our commitment is to improve access to NHS dental care so
that those who need to see a dentist are able to, especially in
under-served parts of the country.
A key priority for this Government is to grow capacity within
dentistry so that there are more NHS dentists delivering care to
patients. The NHS Long Term Workforce Plan sets an ambition to
increase dentistry places by 40%. This is the biggest numerical
expansion of NHS training places in the history of the NHS and
will mean that by 2031 we are training 1,100 dentists each year.
However, training more dentists is not the sole solution to
current workforce challenges in NHS dentistry. We need dentists
to do more NHS work alongside, or instead of, their private work.
More than 35,000 dentists are registered with the General Dental
Council in England. However, only 24,151 dentists delivered at
least some NHS activity in England in 2022 to 2023. This means
that nearly one-third of registered dentists are not contributing
to NHS dentistry and may be exclusively working in private
practice. Furthermore, data published today by the NHS Business
Services Authority shows that of those that are delivering NHS
dental activity, some dentists are making only a token commitment
to NHS dentistry.
The government estimates that training an individual dentist from
the beginning of dental school through to graduation can cost up
to approximately £292,000, of which costs in the region of
£200,000 are not repayable by the student. We believe it is right
and fair to seek better value for the significant investment that
the taxpayer makes in the education and training of the dental
workforce, and for graduate dentists to invest their skills and
expertise in the NHS for the benefit of patients. This NHS
experience will be of great benefit to them throughout their
practice, as well as enabling better access for patients.
That is why we are today publishing a consultation on introducing
a ‘tie-in' for graduate dentists. The introduction of a minimum
NHS service requirement, or ‘tie-in', would aim to ensure that
newly qualified dentists spend at least some of their time
delivering NHS dental care in the years following the completion
of training. This may include working in a ‘high street' primary
care dental practice, secondary care, community dentistry or
dental public health.
The consultation will seek views on two main principles:
- newly qualified dentists should commit to delivering at least
a minimum amount of NHS dental care, for a minimum number of
years after graduating.
- newly qualified dentists should repay some of the public
funding invested in their education and training if they do not
deliver a minimum amount of NHS dental care.
The morale and wellbeing of our highly skilled and hard-working
dental workforce is of utmost priority. I want to thank the many
hard-working dentists for all their efforts as we have seen real
improvements over the past year. We want to make NHS work more
attractive to ensure NHS dentists are incentivised to deliver NHS
care. As part of this, we have already announced a package of
reforms to improve patient access and provide fairer remuneration
for dentists. We are also supporting our excellent dental staff
to work at the top of their training, and encouraging more
hard-working dentists to those areas of England that are
currently under-served. This is accompanied by detailed policy
work on further reforms to the 2006 contract, in discussion with
the profession, to properly reflect the care needed by different
patients and more fairly remunerate practices. We want the
outcome of this work to be better for patients and better for the
workforce.
The publication of this consultation marks an important step in
the delivery of both our plan to recover and reform NHS dentistry
and the NHS Long Term Workforce Plan. We aim to make dental
services faster, simpler and fairer for patients and the
dedicated dentistry workforce. I would encourage all those with
an interest in the policy proposal, whether professionals,
organisations or members of the public, to share their views and
to shape our approach.
