Parliament

Mark Pritchard Conservative, The Wrekin

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will bring forward proposals to improve children's dental health to reduce the number of children admitted to hospital for dental extractions.

Jo Churchill The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care

The Government is committed to improving oral health, particularly of deprived children. Children’s oral health is now better than it has ever been, with over 75% of five-year olds in England now decay free.

Latest data from the NHS Outcomes Framework shows that the number of tooth extractions due to decay for children admitted as inpatients to hospital, aged 10 years and under has dropped from to 424.6 in 2017/18 to 409.4 in 2018/19 (a decrease of 3.6%).

The Government’s Green Paper, ‘Advancing our health: prevention in the 2020s’, published in July, committed to consulting on options for rolling out a national school toothbrushing scheme in more pre-school settings and primary schools, and to consulting on the role water companies can play to support a water fluoridation initiative in England. Both of these proposals will aim to improve the oral health of the most deprived children in all areas of the country and help to reduce the number of children needing tooth extractions.