Dental Recruitment Incentive Scheme

13. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the dental recruitment incentive scheme.

This Government are rebuilding England’s broken NHS dentistry system. The dental recruitment incentive scheme encourages dentists to work in underserved areas. Data on the scheme’s effectiveness will be published later this year. We are taking steps to increase the supply of dentists. For example, last week I was very proud to announce the first sustained expansion of dental school places since 2007, backed by £11 million a year. A total of 50 dental school places a year have been allocated.

My constituent John, who is from Bredbury, has been in touch because like so many others his local dentist is going private and for many families in my constituency, private dentistry simply is not an affordable option. Research by the British Dental Association found that 96% of practices are not accepting new NHS patients and the golden hello, worth £20,000 over three years, is not adequately compensating for a contract that loses them money every day. The scheme just is not working. It has recruited two dentists—two!—in the whole of Greater Manchester, neither of whom is in my constituency. What more can the Minister do to ensure that my constituents get the dentists they need, where they need them?

I thank the hon. Lady for that question, and she is absolutely right to raise the issue of the contract. The fundamental problem is that the units of dental activity system is a contractual system that does not work for NHS dentistry. That is why we had the absurd situation when we came into office in July 2024 of a £392 million underspend on NHS dentistry, because dentists were not incentivised. We are changing that. I have got the underspend down to £36 million. There is still a very long way to go and we need to reform the long-term contract to incentivise dentists to do NHS dentistry.

Access to NHS dentistry remains too difficult in rural and coastal communities such as South East Cornwall, where residents face long travel times and limited provision. Will the Minister meet me to discuss what next steps we can take to improve local access?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that, as we know, there are areas in the country that are known as dental deserts. We have to fix that. It comes back to the fundamental issue of how we incentivise dentists to do NHS dentistry regardless of where they are in the country. There are particularly acute pressures in constituencies such as the one she so brilliantly represents, and I would be happy to meet her to discuss them further.