Sir, when I left office as the chairman of the General Dental Services Committee (GDSC) in January 2003 I resolved not to make public utterances in the future on matters relating to the General Dental Services.

However, I cannot let your report of the Westminster Health Forum keynote seminar entitled 'The Future of Dentistry'1 pass without comment – in particular the conclusions of Professor Watt.

You reported that he said '...there was no perfect system of the remuneration of dentists ... around the world different systems have been tried, no system will be satisfactory to the three stakeholders, the public, the profession or the government'. He called for tests and pilots of different models of care, stating that one system would not fit all.

In August 2002 the Department of Health (DoH) published 'NHS dentistry: options for change'.2 This report, accepted by the then Secretary of State, was the result of months of discussions and debates between all the principal stakeholders (including the DoH and the GDSC), ably chaired by Dame Margaret Seward, the then Chief Dental Officer for England. The report embraced the conclusions of three task groups.

One of these task groups examined 'Systems of delivery of dental care'. Amongst their conclusions was 'No one system of remuneration suits everybody, practices and patients are different and there must be some accommodation for this in any new system'. The task group was chaired by Dr Barry Cockcroft, who is the current Chief Dental Officer for England.

The respective governments chose to ignore their own report when introducing the April 2006 contract in England and Wales.