Clause 23 - Dental Corporations
Health and Social Care Bill
3:30 pm
Mr John Denham (Minister of State, Department of Health; Southampton, Itchen, Labour)
Clause 23 deals with dental corporations. Most dental practices are owned by individual dentists or partnerships, but a limited number are owned by corporate bodies that employ the dentists. Boots has recently acquired a corporate body, and the largest, Integrated Dental Holdings Ltd., has a multi-million pound turnover.
Experience shows that limited liability status helps such bodies to raise capital for investment in building and equipping new dental surgeries, so we want to encourage their growth while ensuring that patients have the same protection that we provide for patients of practices directly owned by dentists.
It may not be commonly known that the number of corporate bodies is currently limited by restrictions in the Dentists Act 1984. Some trading is possible, and new bodies have recently entered the field by buying shell companies, which have ceased to trade. The restriction dates back to the Dentists Act 1921, when the number of corporate bodies was frozen because of concerns that clinical and ethical requirements might be overridden by commercial interests. However, there have been major improvements in the safeguards provided by company law and, with the introduction of the NHS, by the disciplinary controls that we are discussing and enhancing today.
We have positive experience of the widespread involvement of corporate bodies in providing pharmaceutical and optical services for NHS patients. The hon. Member for New Forest, West asked why there was a provision about dental corporate bodies and not others. It is because there is an existing provision for the ophthalmic profession, and there are pharmaceutical regulations that list corporate bodies, but dental corporate bodies are not covered. The proposal corrects that anomaly.