What plans it has to reduce the number of people waiting for urgent NHS dental treatment.

NHS patients requiring urgent care will be seen by practices based on clinical need. Unregistered patients can access emergency and urgent dental care via Public Dental Service clinics. The PDS are NHS Board-run services and therefore the responsibility of the health boards.Public Health Scotland statistics published in August show that over 7 million courses of NHS dental treatment have been delivered to patients since the introduction of payment reform in November 2023, demonstrating that our policy is delivering on our aims to sustain NHS dental services.Our recently published Operational Improvement Plan sets out a package of funded actions to bolster the NHS dental workforce and support increased access now and into the future. This includes support to the dental workforce pipeline through i) the immediate expansion of domestic dental student numbers and ii) the development of an innovative new training package to support international dentists in joining the NHS Scotland workforce.