Dentistry
1:11 pm
Rosie Winterton (Minister of State (Health Services), Department of Health; Doncaster Central, Labour)
I want the hon. Gentleman's primary care trust to ensure that there is appropriate provision locally. We can help support primary care trusts by providing them with extra money, which we have done, and a contract worked out with dentists that reduces bureaucracy and allows better care for patients, which we have done; and through measures such as the international qualifying exam to ensure that NHS dentistry can be provided locally The improvements in access will rely in part on the growing use that primary care trusts make of their new flexibilities under local commissioning. They will also rely on dentists adapting to new ways of working, which free up time, as we have seen from the pilots, and increase capacity to enable a greater number of patients to be seen.