Sir, the recent BBC reports on 'dental deserts', where NHS dental practices are unable to accept new patients, have opened a fresh, public debate on our profession's heroic efforts to provide a viable service to our patients.

The Brexit campaigners promised the electorate that leaving the EU would repatriate £350 million per week for spending on the NHS, making £18.2 billion per year. There would have been many demands on that money although even a portion of that would have covered the costs of many courses of dental work, but where has that money gone? Was the electorate sold a lie?

There is a catastrophic lack of staff across the NHS, including dental practices, and we certainly know where many of the NHS staff have gone: post-Brexit working conditions made them so unwelcome here that they have gone home to their EU countries. I have always been impressed by how my NHS colleagues have worked ridiculously hard in order to balance the conflicting demands of providing a professional level of dental care, within the draconian constraints of the 2006 contract, and keeping their practices financially viable. My respect for my NHS colleagues is huge.

An alarmingly dystopian vision has recently been added to the mix by the recent BDJ articles which encourage dentists to question the 'strategic importance' of a tooth before deciding which treatment to provide, on account of the restricted NHS funding. I am sure that we all can think of other aspects of NHS work which are of less strategic importance than enabling people to have a healthy, functioning mouth, but the money can be found for those services. Again, where is the promised Brexit money for funding the NHS?

Not only is the whole of the NHS falling apart, due to its lack of funds and staff, but my work as a magistrate has shown that the same is happening within the judicial system. Southampton's court house, where I sit, has six available courts but we regularly have only one of those courts in action, leading to a vast backlog of cases and a lack of justice for the victims of crime. Our probation colleagues have ridiculously high targets to meet, without being given the funding and resources to make those targets remotely achievable. Does that problem sound familiar? In the meantime, work has been proceeding on enabling people to travel between Birmingham and London in 20 fewer minutes, at a cost of at least £110 billion. Who really wants to be able to do that, at a cost of £5.5 billion per minute, especially now that so many meetings can be equally effective when conducted remotely? Who can doubt that the obscene amount of money needed for this vanity project would have brought so many benefits to the NHS? Where is our promised, post-Brexit NHS money?