MANY years ago when I was a student my then girlfriend and I were strapped for cash. We each wrote to our parents begging for a sub, telling them we hadn’t eaten anything for a few days and any donations would be gratefully wasted on food instead of cigarettes and booze. My father sent me photocopies of all his outstanding bills and my mother tucked a tenner into an envelope along with the words “Don’t tell your dad.”

My girlfriend was the daughter of very wealthy parents so we had high hopes of them. What we got back was a chatty letter but no money. In the letter her mother advised, “When times are hard, eat steak. It’s cheap and very nourishing.”

She hadn’t really got a clue, had she? In all her years on this planet the woman had never been short of a bob or two and never had an empty belly. Obviously never been a student either. The fact that the woman couldn’t be bothered to send a few quid to her starving daughter was quite gob-smacking!

Which brings me to the GDC, which has concluded its consultation exercise into the potential increase of dentists’ ARF by 64% and by the time you read this will be almost ready to publish its results. The threat of such an unparalleled increase in registration fees has vented many spleens and even that august body Dental Protection has written a scathing damnation in which Dental Director Kevin Lewis said: “In our experience, no other dental regulator in the world is so far removed from the principles of ‘right touch’ regulation where Fitness to Practise is concerned. It is perverse for the GDC to require registrants to make available, and to operate, effective in-house procedures for managing patient complaints, and then to waste registrants’ ARF payments on a proactive advertising campaign which deters patients from using these in-house procedures, instead directing them to complain to the Dental Complaints Service or GDC.”

Of course what he’s talking about there is the unhappy situation the GDC has found itself in due to an unprecedented rise in the number of patient complaints leading to FtP procedures which I touched upon last month. And also the fact that dental professionals were astonished when despite this the Council took out a full-page ad in the Daily Telegraph advising patients to bring their troubles to either themselves or the DCS rather than try to find local (and more cost-effective) resolution by talking to the “offending” dentist.

The results of the consultation have been posted and only 3.1% of respondents have said yes to the increase, there were no ‘don’t knows’. 96.9% of more than 4,400 dental professionals said no and their comments filled over 170 pages. Some of them were cutting, a few abusive, none were positive about anything GDC. This was a consultation exercise not a referendum, so what happens next?

But the fact is that the GDC is hard up and it can’t write to its mum and ask for a sub until its grant turns up. As a thoughtful and considerate regulator it will know to keep its costs to a minimum and not annoy its registrants who are being told they have to find extra money to help meet its costs.

And then registrants read this: “The General Dental Council (GDC) is seeking to appoint a new Appointments Committee comprising a lay chair and three members (one lay and two dental professionals). Further information and details on how to apply can be found at www.harveynash.com/gdc.”

Rather than interview applicants itself and deal with the matter internally, the Council has made the decision to use a pan-global recruitment service like Harvey Nash.

I suppose the fact that it cries poverty belies the numbers. The Council takes an income in the region of £31 million from registrants and though it may be feeling the pinch due to outgoings, I presume it is still of the mind that if things get tough it can eat steak. After all, it is cheap and nutritious.