HC Deb 29 February 1996 vol 272 cc663-4W
Mr. Sumberg

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the creation of the Defence Dental Agency. [18763]

Mr. Soames

The Defence Dental Agency—DDA—will form up on 1 March 1996, when primary dental care currently provided on a single-service basis will be included within a tri-service agency under the control of a chief executive. The headquarters of the DDA will initially be based in London and its training functions will be undertaken at Aldershot and Halton. However, the majority of the agency's personnel will continue to be employed in dental clinics throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. The staff of the agency comprise 864 military and 179 civilian personnel.

Each service will continue to recruit to its own dental branch and to be responsible for issuing appointments and posting orders for personnel of their particular service into, within, and out of the agency after agreement with the chief executive, and for an agreed duration. It is expected that uniformed dental personnel will spend the major part of their career working within the agency.

The aim of the agency is to contribute to the operational effectiveness of the armed forces by achieving and maintaining, in the most cost-effective way, their dental fitness in war, operational situations other than war, and peace.

The chief executive will be afforded the responsibility and flexibility to build upon the professional ability and reputation for excellence of all three service dental branches. This will ensure that the MOD retains the capacity to deploy trained dental staff on military operations, retain close supervision of the dental fitness standards of service personnel, and maximise value for money in the delivery of dental treatment for service personnel in order to maintain their operational readiness during peacetime.

The chief executive has been set the following key targets for the first year of operation:

  1. 1. To achieve the number of professional militarily trained personnel required for deployment at the specified readiness to meet medical support plans for the national contingency force based on defence planning assumptions 96.
  2. 2. To define and implement tri-service dental fitness for deployment standards, and introduce a system of coding and quantifying outstanding treatment needs by 31 March 1996; and to achieve the agreed dental fitness for deployment performance targets by 31 March 1997.
  3. 3. To identify a suitable clinical management information system and implement it at all DDA main locations.
  4. 4. To operate an interim accounting system and a revised feeder system in order to produce full-cost accrual-based accounts for the financial year 1996–97 for preliminary audit by the National Audit Office.
  5. 5. To achieve the agreed level of dental fitness for the forecast military population and provide treatment for dependants and entitled civilians overseas within budget; and to identify efficiency measures in the course of the financial year 1996– 97 to meet a specific efficiency target for the financial year 1997–98.

I have arranged for copies of the agency's framework document to be placed in the Library of both Houses.