Sir, I write after reading the Editorial by Professor Kay, the new Dean of the Peninsula Dental School (BDJ 2006; 202: 1).

Strangely I read it after listening to a presentation by the Chief Dental Officer in Birmingham when virtually identical phrases were used. Now I understand I am becoming more cynical with every move of the Department of Health, but I wonder who is writing this new script.

Birmingham has suffered badly with promises of a new dental school as the current building continues to deteriorate rapidly, only for the financial difficulties of PCTs and the political wind to move the agenda.

Birmingham has no access problem and the areas of the new schools do; if students could help to reduce that, what a great knock on benefit for the DoH.

One must therefore wonder if this new way of teaching in outreach primary care settings, instead of building a traditional dental school, would ever have happened without scenes of queues outside dental practices, which made front page news headlines.

There must also be a re-evaluation of where such graduates will get work after VT. Many practices used contract value for the Principal to convert and keep the VT using the freed contract value. That cannot happen again this year.

Already I am hearing many stories of practices consolidating contract values and shedding some of the workforce. One must congratulate the Government in changing the position of job shortages to one of over-supply in a very short space of time.

Sadly patient care does not benefit from these changes.