Defence Dental Services

Mr. Harper
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the expenditure was on the defence dental services in each of the last five years.

Derek Twigg
Expenditure on the defence dental services (DDS) is presented in the following table. The total is shown as a sum of Direct Resource Expenditure (R-DEL—Salaries and consumable resources) followed by Capital Resource Expenditure (C-DEL—fixed assets) for each year. Indirect DEL (Depreciation etc.) is not included. Prior to 2005, the DDS was a Defence Agency (the Defence Dental Agency).

Figures for the last five years are:

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|Financial year                                                                         |RDEL  |CDL  |Total |
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|2002-03                                                                                |40.801|0.900|41.701|
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|2003-04                                                                                |48.677|1.253|49.930|
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|2004-05                                                                                |49.466|1.205|50.671|
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|2005-06                                                                                |52.253|0.445|52.698|
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|2006-071                                                                               |54.400|1.833|56.233|
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|1 Please note that the figures for the financial year 2006-07 have yet to be finalised.|      |     |      |
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Mr. Harper
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many defence dental service dental officers were deployed on each operation in each of the last five years.

Derek Twigg
The number of times military dental officers deployed on operations in each calendar year is shown in the following table:

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|                       |2002|2003|2004|2005|2006|
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|Op Herrick— Afghanistan|—   |—   |—   |—   |16  |
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|Op Telic—Iraq          |—   |32  |24  |24  |24  |
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|Op Palatine— Bosnia    |8   |8   |—   |—   |—   |
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|Op Occulus— Balkans    |—   |—   |8   |8   |8   |
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|Op Agricola— Kosovo    |4   |4   |4   |4   |—   |
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Mr. Harper
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence how many defence dental service dental officers are located at each of the regional defence dental service headquarters in (a) the UK, (b) Germany and (c) Cyprus.

Derek Twigg
As of April 2007 there were nine defence dental service uniformed dental officers working as Principal Dental Officer (PDO) located at regional Headquarters in the UK, one in Germany and one in Cyprus.

The primary role of a PDO is to provide higher management to the regional dental centres. However, a number of PDOs also provide primary dental care at a dental clinic within their region.