NHS dentistry is under unprecedented pressure.

Many people are unable to get the treatment they need, leaving them in pain or forced to fork out thousands for private health care.

Rishi has a five-point plan to sort this out, focusing on prevention, alleviating the pressures on NHS dentists, and providing greater capacity for the system. He will activate this plan on day one to ensure that the British people get more bang for our buck from the NHS. Here’s how:

Ring-fence dentistry funding

We will strengthen the protections around the annual NHS dentistry budget to make sure frontline dental services are protected.

We will also make sure that commissioners in rural areas demonstrate how they will deliver for communities who do not live close to a dentist.

Reform the dental activity contract

We will review dentists’ contractual arrangements and incentives to ensure that they are not opting out of delivering NHS dentistry because of problems with their contract. We have fantastic NHS dentists in this country and we need to ensure that they are incentivised to stay.

Improve workforce planning and training

We would initiate an urgent review of the recruitment process, to explore how it can be simplified and streamlined. This would look into factors that currently make it easier to register as a dentist in the private sector than the NHS, such as different training requirements.

Free up time for dentists on the frontline

We will trust NHS professionals to get on with their jobs and act in the best interests of their patients.

We will review the wider duties and responsibilities that can be shared across dental practices, and identify opportunities for upskilling wider dental teams, enabling them to take on additional duties within their practices.

Improve Early Years Prevention

We will initiate a pilot of primary school dental check-ups, and provide parents and teachers with more information and resources. By focusing on prevention, we can address dental issues before they increase in seriousness and require more intensive treatments.

Do you support my five-point plan to restore NHS dentistry? Then take a look at my plan to tackle the NHS backlog emergency, so that we can make sure that the NHS is always there for everyone who needs it.