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Yes, of course the Scottish Government is aware of that. The comments from Tom Ferris and Tim McDonnell underline the breadth of the work that we are doing in primary care dentistry in Scotland. There are some very good examples of areas of inequality being served by health boards.

Health boards know their areas very closely. For example, the Tayside dental bus specifically goes into areas of deprivation, and I am pleased that that service was recognised at the NHS Scotland awards last month. We also have a public dentistry service in Edinburgh that holds certain clinics in more deprived areas, in recognition that not everyone can go to Chalmers Street. That is important.

I underline the work that we are doing on prevention. We continue to invest in childsmile to support children. If we teach children, that goes to parents, too. Specific funding has also been directed to people in care homes, people with drug addiction and members of ethnic minorities, which supports them on the preventative side of healthcare. That is very important, and it is a key investment in Scotland’s dental services that ensures that we work towards everybody in Scotland having better oral health.

I will give an overview, and I will then pass to Tom Ferris.

As I indicated earlier, each health board is responsible for looking at dental support within its footprint. Each health board has a director of dentistry, and we rely on them to have conversations with the Scottish Government regarding areas that they believe need SDAI funding. We have been working very closely with directors of dentistry, and we have listened to a lot of comments from your colleagues at the two dental round-table meetings that we held earlier this year. We are considering how we can focus more on where the SDAI grants are available.

Public Health Scotland gathers the data for the Scottish Government, as you well know. When I was at its annual review, alongside Paul Kelly from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—we co-chair the annual review with COSLA—we were shown a tool that is pulling in data from an education perspective and from a health perspective. It has been piloted in a few schools over the past year or so. One school recognised that there was an issue with oral health; as a result of the pilot, it was able to focus on that. That is the kind of information that we are getting.

However, the information is only as good as the decisions that come out of it. That pilot is a good example of where data is being gathered from two different sources—education and health boards—and acted on to improve people’s health. We need to focus on that.

It is important to recognise that secondary school children have access to free dental health care. One of the conversations that I have quite regularly with Tom Ferris is about the number of adverts on telly for toothbrushes and toothpaste. There is an important point to be made about ensuring that people of all ages are aware of their oral health. I am happy to take that point away and have a conversation with my colleagues in education about how that fits in.

The database from Public Health Scotland that I have just described has the potential to result in improvements. The example that I gave was in a primary school, but I imagine that secondary school teachers would recognise the importance of bringing in education on oral health for older children. That is an important point.

Dentists can deregister patients. I am not quite clear about the timeframe, but Tom Ferris can explain.

Carol Mochan and I have a lot of conversations about inequalities, and I agree strongly with her that we need to focus on ensuring that inequalities are reduced.

As I highlighted in response to an earlier question, although I do not want to see any gap at all, the inequality gap is the lowest in almost 15 years. In 2010, it was 32.2 per cent—it is now down to 23.5 per cent. Can we go further? Yes, we have to go further, and we are investing in dental health support workers, who go specifically into deprived communities.

I highlighted the dental caravan in NHS Tayside—I had never before met two people who so enjoyed the work that they did, and they recognised the importance of that work. There are various elements of work that are doing well, but I take on the challenge that Carol Mochan has given me, which we discuss regularly. I will bring in Tom Ferris to speak further on that.

I recognise that things have changed dramatically since 2017-18, when the oral health improvement plan was set in motion. The important thing to note is that that was very much an evidence-based piece of work to understand exactly what was needed. There were a number of recommendations, and many elements of them have been delivered through the payment reform.

As Tom Ferris has discussed, there has been a focus on preventative care. We also note the importance of continuing to provide the full range of treatment. In the payment reform, we have reduced the number of categories that people can claim against, but there is still the full range of treatments. I believe that the evidence that we have given so far is that payment reform is the foundation or underpinning of the other developments that we must make, both in reform and in investment.

There has been a range of governance proposals regarding NHS boards. In including the directors of dentistry, we have been cognisant of that. We have also been monitoring clinical quality, which is very important. We work with Healthcare Improvement Scotland on that.

We are still considering the use of the dental team and where it is right to fit that. The oral health improvement plan underpins the work that we continue to do on workforce, which we view as the key focus. There is also the matter of governance of dental practices.

You asked whether we should review the oral health improvement plan. I do not believe that now is the right time to do that. We have done a lot of work to stabilise dental services, and we need to keep the focus on that. I have been speaking to my officials about workforce, and that is where we need to focus our efforts to ensure that we get the right number of dentists, dental therapists and hygienists in Scotland and that we can give them the right training. That is where we should be focusing, rather than going back to the sector at this point.

That is a key question with regard to what we are doing. It also relates to the number of spaces on university courses. I think that you will remember that, during the pandemic, we lost about 180 people because they did not get their practical experience; we are playing catch-up in that regard. That all falls into health workforce planning. We have conversations about that. It is also recognised that there are a lot of women in dentistry, and they might have different work patterns. We have to pull in all that information.

Generally, staff planning for health does not fall under my remit, but I would be happy to come back with a specific response to your question. We talk about workforce planning regularly to ensure that we have the right profile in dental teams. That ties in closely to Emma Harper’s questions about people working to the top of their qualification and how we can work across the UK to get more people into dentistry and working at the right levels.

That ties in with our work with the other three nations on ensuring that we get that pipeline of dentists. My view is that I cannot imagine a better place to work than Scotland, and I know that certain practices have been very good at attracting dentists. I appreciate what Brian Whittle said about the number of international dentists coming to Scotland and the impact on their home countries, but I should say that I have had the privilege of meeting five dentists from India who chose to work in the Borders. They wanted to come to Scotland, because they saw it as an opportunity.

We have to ensure that we provide the right opportunities, but it is also important that we give dentists who are either coming out of university in Scotland or coming from an international country the right support once they are qualified. That is part of the work that we have been talking about with regard to next year’s budget and ensuring that, as Tom Ferris indicated, we have the right support in place for dentists and dental therapists in these areas so that they are able to enjoy living and working in Scotland, which I am sure they will.

The directors of dentistry are a very important group of individuals who work closely with my officials. As you know, there is one in each health board, which is important, because they have oversight of what is happening in their areas and can feed that directly back to the Scottish Government dental team.

I have engaged directly with them as a group on two occasions, once in a Zoom—or Teams—meeting and once in person at one of their regular get-togethers. I think, Tom, that you meet them—