Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 3:12 pm on 13 March 2019.
Well, thank you for that anticipatory report of the contractual overhaul. And it's encouraging that you are looking at this, and I look forward to the statement in the autumn. Now, of course, I can't really pre-empt what that statement is going to say, but if I could flag up a few issues relating to the contract—the British Dental Association say that the recruitment and retention of dentists in Wales has been a problem for some time, and, of course, the contracts currently in place are part of the problem. They have called on the Welsh Government in the past to devise a system that makes Wales a more attractive place for dentists to work. Some of the problems are relating to the tough UDA targets, which are currently called for—that's, as you know, units of dental activity. We do have the system of clawback as well, whereby if they underperform by more than 5 per cent, there is this clawback of money. So, these are all issues that feed into this rather unwieldy contractual system that you've identified. So, I know you say there is an overhaul and we are going to have a statement in the autumn. I don't know if you can make any comment at the moment on some of the issues that I've raised.