Madam,

Your article headlined ‘Urgent need for more NHS dentists’ gave an account of the exchanges between Alan Leech, MP Ben Lake, and Vaughan Gething, minister for health and social services.

The minister did not mention that the effort to develop and implement a contract to replace that implemented in 2006, which came to be recognised as not fit for purpose, has been ongoing for at least six years.

The minister is a member of a government that has an outstanding history of good intentions, which have not been delivered at all, or within a few years have proved unsustainable. Nowhere are the effects of this incompetence in providing public services felt more acutely than here in west Wales, where only the outstanding natural environment gives solace to the long-suffering population.

The rapid growth by acquisition of small but effective providers, and maximising rationalisation to achieve economies of scale is the game plan quietly being played out which will, without government intervention, inevitably lead to very large private sector companies having control of the vast majority of what we now call Primary Care and Care in the Community; large private corporate groups of GPs, domiciliary care providers and nursing and residential care homes already exist. Some have already come and gone with patients suffering the need to be ‘rescued’ by another provider.

Why any government should think it a good idea to allow vital services to be provided by profit-led organisations which, when the going gets tough, happily go into administration, is incomprehensible.

That a Labour-led government founded on looking after the working classes actively encourages strategies that apparently offer no protection from predatory speculators at the expense of services paid for from taxation is gross misrepresentation.

The people of west Wales deserve better. Without that they too will continue to walk away.

Yours etc. Bill Parker, Llanfair Clydogau, Lampeter.

Have your say on the local issues affecting you - email [email protected] or join in the conversation on our Facebook page