Sir Julian Lewis: Does the Secretary of State agree that one of the worst and most intractable problems that the founders of the NHS had to deal with was the involvement of medical practitioners and consultants who were used to receiving a private income in a national service where they would not receive anything like the same remuneration? If he agrees, would he accept that there is a similar situation with NHS dentistry today? The Darzi report said:

“There are enough dentists in England, just not enough dentists willing to do enough NHS work, which impacts provision for the poorest in society.”

How does he think his reforms will help address that particular crisis, on which Members like myself and my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest West (Sir Desmond Swayne) are being consistently and rightly lobbied by such formidable organisations as the New Forest branch of the women’s institute?

[The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Wes Streeting): NHS dentistry is in a terrible state and, in fact, in many parts of the country it barely exists. There are lots of reasons for that, and it is a source of constant astonishment to me that the dentistry budget was underspent year after year despite that situation. The Minister for Care is working with the British Dental Association to reform the contract. I know that Members are frustrated at the pace, and so am I. We are trying to clear an enormous challenge; it is not going to be easy, but we are committed to working with the profession. We are rolling out the 700,000 urgent dentist appointments and supervised toothbrushing, as we promised and as the BDA has welcomed, but we have a lot more to do. That requires working with the profession – not simply tinkering with the system as it is, but fundamentally rethinking it and how we rebuild it into an NHS dentistry service that we can be proud of.]