Dentistry (Hansard, 9 July 2003)

§ Mr. Kidney
To ask the Secretary of State for Health if he will publish the results of the Dental Workforce Review. [123611]

§ Ms Rosie Winterton
We aim to publish the results of the National Workforce Review, including workforce planning assumptions for the National Health Service and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, later this year.

§ Mr. Kidney
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what preparations he is making for the commissioning of dental services by primary care trusts, with particular reference to the support and training to be provided to primary cary trusts; and what estimate he has made of the levels of funding that primary care trusts will receive to fund local NHS dentistry services. [123612]

§ Ms Rosie Winterton
Workshops for primary care trusts (PCTs) and for dentists have been run by the NHS Modernisation Agency with the support of the NHS Confederation and the involvement of the Department of Health to consider these matters. Following appraisal860W of these events, discussions are taking place with strategic health authorities about what form of support would best ensure a successful transition.
Subject to Parliament, funding for primary dental services will be allocated to PCTs. These funds, hitherto held centrally and administered by the Dental Practice Board, will then be part of PCTs' general allocation. Current spending will be protected and in the longer term, allocations will need to take health needs into account, as general allocationscurrently do. In some areas that may mean making additional funding for dentistry available to PCTs so that they can begin to address the long-term oral health inequalities that many of them face. That would be taken into account in future allocations within the framework of the funding formula.

§ Mr. Dawson
To ask the Secretary of State for Health what recent research he has commissioned on(a) the financial advantages for dentists who move to private practice from the national health service and (b) the reasons why dentists choose to move to private practice. [124046]

§ Ms Rosie Winterton
The Department has not commissioned research on the financial advantages for dentists who move to private practice from the national health service or the reasons why dentists choose to move to private practice.
It is widely recognised that some dentists initially chose to increase their proportion of private practice as a consequence of the new contract introduced in 1990. The contract was implemented without fully piloting many of the changes it contained. As a result of problems with the new arrangements, there was a reduction in dentists' fees in 1992 to stabilise the system.
It has been identified in successive reports from Bloomfield's "Fundamental Review of Remuneration" in 1992 to the Health Select Committee in 2001 that dentists' current main cause of disaffection with the NHS is the way in which they are paid. The Health and Social Care (Community Health and Standards) Bill puts in place a framework by which it will be possible to pay dentists differently and reward them for different types of work. This will mark a move away from the current item of service system, which many dentists complain of.
The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) published a report in March into the private dentistry market in the UK. The government welcomed the report and share the OFT's concerns about the market. One of the broad conclusions of the OFT's survey research was that dentists face very little competitive pressure. It is therefore relatively easy for dentists to enter the private market and retain their patients, who may "lack the information necessary to make informed choices", according to the report.