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We would be wiser to accept that there are no fast fixes on the horizon no matter what the politicians glibly tell us,We have a problem through government shortsighted incompetence and as taxpayers who are collectively footing the bill we should look to rectify it. This will take up to 5 years. Dental students should only be accepted and properly financed on the five year course if they first sign a legally binding contract that upon graduation they will work for the NHS for 10 out of the next 12 years as dentists. A moratorium should be seriously considered on the number of foreign students getting trained as dentists in our Dental Schools for the next few years.

Mick: You are talking mince and I think you know it. Only 40% of students at Glasgow and Dundee dental schools are Scots. Under EU rules Universities are not allowed to discriminate in favour of their own nationals. They can only accept students on the basis of the admission criteria. The Labour genius that is Andy Kerr set up a scheme to encourage dental students to take up vocational training posts in Scotland..... Guess the take up? 40%. So he has given dental students £5,000 to do what they would have done anyway and called it a success. The BDA's figures suggest that somewhere around 40% of Scotland's current dentists are due to retire in the next decade. This means there will be even fewer dentists in Scotland even if Aberdeen University open their dental school (though according to those in the know there are not sufficiently trained academic dentists in the UK around to enable the school to open). The public dental service as currently 'dentist based' has collapsed and is not viable, will never will be even if you send final year deental students out to 'out reach centres' to try and plug the gaps. If Scotland wants a public dental service to meet its actual needs, rather than wants, it has to be a different model for delivery not more of the same done even worse. There is a model, I have tried to get ministers to listen, I even have a petiton at Holyrood that has taken three years so far to go nowhere decribing the model. It can work and accepts that low numbers of dentists interested in NHS work. The problem is it requires advisors at NHS Scotland to admit for ten years they have been talking a lot of balderdash on Scottish dental services. A civil servant agreeing maybe they have got it wrong? Not in my lifetime.

Mick here's the story of the destruction of NHS dentistry: In 1982 a paper was published that predicted by 2020 that decay rates in children would be less than one tooth in their whole life. This was based on taking what had happened to declining decay rates between 1968 and 1982. The Tory Government of the day then moved this professor to be one of their chief advisors on NHS dentistry. Based on his figures the number of dentists needed to run the NHS dental service by 2020 would around half of current numbers employed and so a number of Dental Schools, and academics got the chop by 1990. The problem was they assumed all dentists would continue to work in the NHS. The Tory Government of the day then made the situation even worse by imposing a contract on the dental profession that had been rejected by a 3:1 vote in 1990 - based on the good professor's figures they thought they could screw over the dental profession. Between 1990 and 2000 over 50% of dentists became ex-NHS dentists and found they could make a decent living outside of the NHS. Where does this then leave Government NHS manpower figures for dentistry? Right down the swanney. It is also interesting to note that Glasgow which has the best ratio of NHS dentists to population also has the worst decay rates of 7.8 vs 3.1 for the rest of Scotland in the U16 group. So you could ponder if NHS dentistry does in fact work?

dentists have always seemed to have good working conditions compared to other similarly qualified NHS professionals - office hours only, no on calls, decent pay and job security. When you say decent living outside the NHS do you really mean lavish? Dentists havent been immune to prosecution from false claims/unnecessary work etc but i accept that may be a few bad apples. In addition the all too familiar story of government mismanagement is reminiscent of current events in the NHS.