To ask the Secretary of State for Health (1) if she will now make it her policy to ensure that all hand-pieces used by general dental practitioners are autoclaved after being used on each patient;(2) if she will now make it her policy to ensure that all general dental practitioners use disposable gloves which are not re-used for successive patients.

The Department has already issued guidance which covers both the autoclaving of hand pieces and the use of disposable gloves, the maintenance of clinical standards is primarily a matter for the dental profession. The latest advice from the Department is contained in "Guidance for Clinical Health Care Workers—Protection Against Infection with HIV and Hepatitis Viruses" of January 1990, a copy of which is available in the Library.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health how many dentists, who have not given notice to leave the dental list, have given written notice to each family health services authority to terminate or deregister some or all of their capitation arrangements for child patients in each week since 20 November; how many dentists have deregistered patients; and how many patients have been deregistered.

[holding answer 29 April 1993]: The information provided weekly by family health services authorities since July 1992 shows that in the period up to 23 April 1993, 201 dentists have given written notification to deregister 1,421 child patients. The tables set out, by FHSA, for each week since 20 November 1992, the number of new dentists who have deregistered child patients and the total number of child patients deregistered by all dentists.