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Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Official Podcast of the Dentists Who Invest platform. Talking all things investing, money and finance with a dental spin. Have you ever wondered how you can grow your wealth and protect your hard earned money as a Dentist? We've got you covered. Featuring famous guests such as Andrew Craig, Edward Zuckerberg and Benyamin Ahmed we delve deep into EVERY aspect of finance to educate and empower ALL Dentists.
Dentists Who Invest Podcast
Here's What The UK Government Are Doing To The Finances Of Dentists with Eddie Crouch [CPD Available]
Get your free verifiable CPD for this episode here >>> https://www.dentistswhoinvest.com/videos/heres-what-the-uk-government-are-doing-to-the-finances-of-dentists-with-eddie-crouch
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The financial pressure on UK dental practices has never been higher. Eddie Crouch, chairman of the BDA, reveals how recent budget changes are adding an extra £14,000 per year in costs to the average practice, pushing many NHS dentists to the brink.
While private practices can adjust fees, NHS practices face a deeper crisis. Despite a 6% government pay uplift, practice expenses are calculated using a 1.68% GDP deflator, while real dental inflation is closer to 14%. This mismatch has led to a 30% drop in NHS dentist income over the past decade, with more dentists reducing or exiting their NHS commitments.
Eddie shares insights from his discussions with MPs, exposing how politics influences NHS dental policies. With only 3% of practices accepting new NHS patients and 13 million people lacking NHS dental access, the future of NHS dentistry is uncertain. Will it focus solely on children’s care, emergency services, or means-tested access? Eddie explores these possibilities, along with the rise of corporate dentistry and shifting practice ownership dynamics.
Stay informed on the biggest challenges in UK dentistry. Listen now—and UK dentists can earn free verifiable CPD by completing the questionnaire in the episode description!
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Today we're joined by Mr Eddie Crouch, chairman of the BDA. We're going to be talking about how the recent budget changes by the Chancellor have affected dental practices across the UK and also take a slight divergence from the theme of finance today to talk about what Eddie has experienced in his encounters with politicians and MPs across the land in order to understand what the MPs think about dentistry and what they're doing about the current predicaments that we find ourselves in as a profession. I'm also super excited today to announce a brand new feature for the Dentists Who Invest platform, and that is free verifiable CPD to all UK dentists who have enjoyed this podcast episode. Whenever you finish the episode, all you have to do is click the link in the podcast description. It'll take you right through the Dentists Who Invest website. You'll be able to complete a short questionnaire and, once passed, you fill in your reflections and we'll go ahead and email over to you your verifiable CPD certificate, which is entirely free. What that means is this podcast episode will be able to contribute towards your verifiable CPD hours during this learning cycle.
Dr James:Welcome back to the dentist who invest podcast with my very esteemed guest today, Mr Eddie Crouch, chairman of the bda, and we're going to be delving into all things finance for dentists from Eddie perspective, given that Eddie has got his sleeves rolled up and is involved in this stuff day to day and is regularly visiting parliament and speaking on behalf of us dentists. So, Eddie, I guess a good place to start might be what's changed recently in the financial landscape for dentists, what with the budgets that we've been having recently.
Eddie:Yeah, I mean it must be really quite worrying, I think, for many, many colleagues with the.
Eddie:With the changes that the Chancellor announced in the budget in the autumn, the national insurance contributions and the minimum wage effects will really have a detrimental effect on profit margins for practices and obviously as a private practice you can incorporate that into your fees. But as an NHS practice it's really evident that we will need some support and at the moment the information on that is really lacking. We understand that there's going to be a conversation with the uplifts of NHS funding as a result of the doctors and dentists review body. I can go into that in a bit more detail if you want, but you know when this was announced the BDA, you know, put on its website a calculator for practices on how they would actually work out what the effects of the budget were and an average practice was coming in at about 14,000 extra expenditure just on the budgetary changes alone. So you know that really is quite worrying for the profit margins on some practices where actually you know certainly in England and Wales with clawback that you know the profit margins are already being squeezed.
Dr James:Yikes, and you know what Interesting are already being squeezed. Yikes, and you know what interesting question. That just popped into my head, given that you've got your boots in the ground whenever it comes to this stuff and people are coming to you directly and voicing their fears, yeah, or their concerns. What are dentists out there saying? Is it as simple as where's the money going to come from, or is there more to it?
Eddie:um, well, I think that you know the the sensible people out there are actually wondering whether they can survive, I suppose, in an nhs system that really is at rock bottom. You know, uh, you know the words that we've been saying at the bda for a long period of time are being echoed in parliament. You, you've got a secretary of state who says you, you know, nhs dentistry is a death store, and you've got another minister talking about Dickensian ways of the way people are actually pulling their own teeth at. You know people are really operating.
Eddie:Saw, really over the last decade is many practices looking to cross-subsidize their loss of earnings from the NHS and we've seen a 30% drop in income for NHS dentists in all parts of the UK. We've seen industrial action in other parts of the NHS where in hospitals our colleagues were on strike alongside the BMA members in certain areas and we've seen the effect of that in that the government have reacted to that. But sadly, on the high street people have been cross subsidizing from private work for a long period of time and I think the pandemic put that into a tipping point. You know, people were actually coming out of the pandemic and going back into a treadmill delivery service in the NHS and thought you know what? I'm not sure I want to go back into that.
Dr James:Indeed. So general air of concern, which is not unreasonable and, as you say, I mean it's going to be more poignant for nhs practices, isn't it, given that there's only so much scope to move things around and generate a little bit more profit. You talked about the doctors and dentists review board. There's been a little bit of uh, there's been a little bit more money handed out to the dentist. So, right, and I want to know how much. I guess what would be interesting to know is how much that's actually translated into more remuneration for NHS practices.
Eddie:Yeah, I mean the award this year was 6% uplifting pay. But if you're working in practice you know that to actually deliver 6% uplifting pay for you, your associates and for your staff, what you have to do is actually make sure that the running costs of the practice are covered as well to allow you to give that level of remuneration uplift. And over the last decade there's been shenanigans really, with the doctors and dentists review body. They make recommendation on pay but they leave the negotiation on expenses of running practices to local negotiation with BDA. So BDA members in Northern Ireland, scotland, wales and England have dialogue with the relevant departments about how they compensate for the running costs of the business as well to allow that DDRB uplift to be implemented.
Eddie:And in effect the negotiations are pretty one-sided. They come along with an offer and that offer is often manipulated about affordability. So, for example, in the past, when RPI has been high, they've used CPI because it's been lower. When CPI has been high, they've used CPI because it's been lower. When CPI has been high, they've used RPI because it's lower. When they're both high, which they have been recently, they've had to come up with a new factor to actually make it more affordable for them and in England they came up with something called a GDP deflator, which I'd never heard of but apparently is used across the whole of the health service, and according to government figures that was 1.68%.
Eddie:And you know, if you ask the average person running a dental practice if their inflation is running at 1.68%, they'd give you a definite answer that it's way way more than that. You know our estimates recommend or sorry, have found that it's probably around 14% or thereabouts. And in fact you know our calculator for the national insurance contributions that was coming in about 14,000 extra for a practice. So you know inflation in dental practices is running much, much higher than the government are able to afford and as a consequence of that the pay uplifts in dental practice are nowhere near 6%. So when a government minister stands up and says we've honored the DDRB in full, it's misleading, very misleading. And in fact in England this year the uplift in contracts was only introduced in March, the latest it's ever been, and while it's backdated to April. You know that will help as a bit of a bolster at the end of the financial year, but the cash flow has been affected throughout the whole year.
Dr James:Yes, because I recall you saying that it's taken a little bit of time for this to kick in. And what's their reasoning for that, or what's their justification?
Eddie:Well, there's various things. Sometimes they say that we need to wait for the autumn budget. I mean, I used to chair the committee at the BDA that produced the evidence for the DDRB and I gave oral evidence every year. We've given oral evidence in the last few months again and you know, in the six years that I actually chaired that committee and gave evidence to the DDRB, the report's supposed to come out in March and the uplifts to contracts are supposed to happen in April. And in those six years it only happened once.
Eddie:And this year the negotiations, the offer actually came in in the summer and then they had negotiations with us and then they stopped talking really. And there there was a belief, I suppose naively. We believed that they were going away and listening to our arguments and saying we need to do something more about this because, let's be honest, the new government wanted to make an impression with a profession that was turning their backs and walking away from nhs dentistry. You would think that they would want to actually give some good news out and we thought, well, that may be happening after the Chancellor's budget and we saw that an extra you know 20 odd billion was allocated to the NHS. We thought we might get some of that, but sadly that hasn't happened.
Dr James:Eddie, a bit of a direct question just out of interest, but I know this will be fascinating to the listeners Do you think that NHS dentistry is salvageable?
Eddie:No, yeah, I think it is. You know, I think if they're not going to invest any more money into it, then I think we have to look at how you can target that budget. And one of the policy directives of the Labour Party is to deliver 700,000 extra urgent and emergency appointments. Uh, they originally went into the general election with a manifesto pledge that it was fully costed and they were going to cost it with 150 million out of non-dom tax. Uh, they've now backtracked on that and said it's going to have to come out of the existing budget. Um, and we know that.
Eddie:You know, 450 million in in England was clawed back and not spent on dentistry. So there is a significant amount of underspending dentistry, but it's mainly because people can't recruit and retain staff and deliver on the NHS contract. So, yes, it provide a basic service. And you know we're up for a conversation about whether you modify the universal delivery of encompassing all encompassing care to a targeted resource.
Eddie:I remember back in the day when Jimmy still did a review after the 2006 contract was introduced and he produced a really interesting report that says you know, if you're not going to put more money into dentistry, then there are levels of where you must spend the money, and this is a government that wants to work on prevention. This is a government that wants to work on prevention, so should we target it that a child only service to make our children as dentally fit as they possibly can be, so it saves the NHS money in the future? Or do you target the money on people who can't afford private care, or on benefits or exempt from dental charges? Or do you provide an emergency service for the population and everything else has to be paid for privately? You know, these are the conversations that we're prepared to have, but it will take a bold government to actually have those conversations.
Dr James:I see. So again, super interesting question to ask someone like yourself, because you're literally at the forefront of this, day in, day out. Is it fair to say that there's no real clear model or clear strategy that people there's a consensus on for the moment?
Eddie:well, it was interesting because, um, uh, the national audit office uh, had an inquiry into the dental recovery plan that was brought in by the previous government and many of the factors of that were picked apart by the National Audit Office. And it was so bad really, that report that the Public Accounts Committee in Parliament asked for a meeting to have a look at the financing of dentistry. And Chris Whitty, amanda Pritchard, the Chief Dental Officer and the Head of NHS Dentists Who in NHS England, was summoned to a meeting. And really fascinating to listen to that two-and-a-half-hour recording. It's still available if people want to listen to it. And you listen to the honesty, I think, of the answers that were coming there.
Eddie:And you know people were saying on the panel um, even if you spent the whole budget for nhs dentistry, it'd only be enough for half the population, um, and they needed to look at the universal offer for dentistry. So I think those conversations are obviously happening because the civil servants are talking about it and they must be talking to ministers about it. And I know in Scotland, for example, they they had their fees uplifted as part of a modernization. But you know, in Wales they've been negotiating a new dental contract. They should be going out to consultation on that in the next few weeks with the public and the profession. So there's lots happening about developing ideas for dentistry, but I think probably what would be supported by the profession is if there's no more money, tell us what you want us to deliver that's affordable for practices to be able to deliver it and you know what.
Dr James:It's interesting because obviously we've been talking a lot about the nhs up until now and I'm going to ask you this question and it might it might be more of a question that we're answering from an anecdotal perspective for your observations. I'm interested to know once upon a time, well, to know once upon a time well, I say once upon a time like it was decades ago, fairly recently, there was a lot of people, a lot of practices were shifting towards private. But now there seems if I've got this correct or what I'm seeing out there is there's a little bit of a rebound in people's thinking that actually mixed is a strong business model and people are gravitating towards that.
Eddie:What do you reckon? Yeah, I think if you speak to people like Demplan and Practiceplan and people that help dentists actually leave the NHS, they saw record levels of business in the last couple of years, but in the run up to the general election, what they were reporting to me was that the volume of business was slightly reduced and people were actually, you know, thinking well, is this new government actually going to do something? Are they actually going to match their warm words with action? And they saw a tail off in the amount of business they were doing. I think if we are to go into, you know, worrying economic times and it looks as though you know people are talking about austerity again. People are talking about, you know, the disposable spend for people being affected Then having a model where you can switch from one to the other gives you a bit more security potentially and I know the trend has been for people to hand back contracts.
Eddie:I sense more and more practices are actually reducing their NHS commitment and handing back part of that contract or reducing their commitment to the NHS in time, but the ability to cross-subsidise one to the other and and possibly, you know, if there were to be improvements in nhs and not to have burnt your bridges on that. It wouldn't, would you know, fit in with what you're saying about, uh, practice sales model. I mean, if you've got a practice in an area where you can do a bit of both, I can can see that that is, you know, a bit more of an attractive proposition than someone buying a practice in an inner city area where really their total reliance is on the NHS.
Dr James:You know. I'm interested to know, Eddie, do you have any stats off the top of your head just how many practices in the UK, percentage-wise, are fully private, versus mixed, versus over 80% NHS, let's say, or majority NHS?
Eddie:Yeah, well, I think that figure is changing on a monthly basis and it's definitely moving in the direction of. You know, if you look at NASDAQ figures you will see that those practices that provide more than 70% NHS are definitely on the drop. The number of practices that were exclusively private was a very small cohort when I qualified back in 1984. 1990 saw a significant increase in the number of private-only practices and I think 2006. The figures were then that about 10% of practices didn't take the contract in 2006 in England. So there was quite a significant shift then to private-only and I think the vast majority of practices over the last four or five years have definitely been reducing their percentage commitment to the NHS, but not gone totally private. But I mean, those figures are obtainable but I haven't got them on the top of my head.
Dr James:No, that's cool. That's a little bit of a curveball question right there, because it might be something that we just know off the bat, but certainly something interesting to look into. Or I've been I mean anecdotally, I reckon it's probably like 10, I think, I think it's probably about 20 private. I'm gonna say, at least that's how it feels to me. I need to look these up.
Dr James:Obviously I'm gonna say, majority still in it, even though there's private gets like 80 of the the attention. People are talking about it, but in reality it's probably more like 20% of praxis, and then the rest would have some component of NHS. Anyway, just my observation. It's definitely one to look up.
Eddie:Yeah, I think the model's been complicated a lot more by the corporate sort of expansion into the marketplace. You know, probably around about a third of all dental services now are operated by corporates and I know in certain corporates there's been a trend even within them to concentrate more on provision of private care to actually retain the workforce. So you know, if they've got a dentist in a corporate who says to them, you know, I'm sorry, I'm leaving and getting a private job somewhere, they're having a conversation with that associate to see if they can support them to actually do far more private work within the corporate model. So you know what is clear is the number of practice contract holders has significantly changed since 2006. In that you know, the mini corporate, the practice expansion in that method and then perhaps being submerged into a larger corporate that business model has definitely developed quite a lot in the last 10 years.
Dr James:I'll tell you what really surprised me, and maybe you've heard this stat, maybe you haven't, but this is what. I've definitely said this before in the Dentists Who Invest podcast, so I think some of the listeners might roll their eyes, but I'm going to say it again because it really caught me off guard. I feel like a lot of people out there think that there's a lot of practices that are associate-led, or I feel like there's a lot of people out there who are running their practice in a hands-off lifestyle, and I spoke to an accountant recently also recent-ish, maybe about six months ago who also deals with a lot of practice sales and he says, James, outside of the corporates, like the big boys that you've heard of, okay, which are obviously all associate, led to some, you know, because they have to be, because that's how their business yeah, I mean that they would have a regional clinical director or someone in a management structure that occasionally comes into the practice and they would they very much rely on uh, another member of staff being the practice manager, for sure you know.
Eddie:Uh, maybe there might be a registrant, might they might not be, but they there might be a dental nurse that's actually progressed, the practice manager, or there might be someone who is not on the register at all, but but yeah, would they be associate-led? I mean, there's a lot of models in corporate where the existing practice is sold and the old owner stays on for a period of time and leads that practice, you know, as a handover. I know that muddling exists, so yeah, yeah.
Dr James:So the stat was. That caught me off guard that he said, James, outside of the corporates, if we're talking about independents and maybe people who have four to five, you know dental praxis, you know where the owner has five dental praxis and under let's say something along those lines. He said James, if you actually look at the numbers, only 10% of dental. Yeah, what do you reckon?
Eddie:yeah, I think, I think, I think the model that's probably more prominent is that the owner of the practice, uh, does far more private work, maybe almost exclusive private work, and it has associates that deliver a mix of nhs and private um. So, yeah, yeah, I, I would imagine that, um, a lot, of a lot of practices are. You know, a lot of people out there are working damn hard as practice owners to actually make their business successful yeah.
Dr James:And then, um, out of interest as well, the nasdaq stats on that. Uh, what was you know? I was looking up those the other day and uh, if you actually look at the stats versus, I mean, obviously you've got like the super associates and ones that are doing really well, your average principal is probably earning less, like, much like, maybe even half as much as a, as a good super associate, which really caught, which I kind of knew that you know. There's this narrative that people say like, oh, like, the dental practice owners can't figure out who's got the better deal and vice versa. Do you know what I mean? And that was an interesting one, that was an interesting one.
Eddie:I think we go through cycles. You know whether and it would be interesting to see what happens if we suddenly got an influx of overseas qualified dentists coming into the country. You know if they saturated the market with the workforce and that's definitely something that the government are looking about encouraging provisional registration with the GDC. You know, if the volume of dentists delivering in the UK changes, then that may change again. But at the moment we've definitely got conditions which favour associates to negotiate, and to negotiate hard, because you know, I know of practices that have advertised even for private associates, that have really struggled after 12, 18, 24 months to even get anyone to apply at all.
Dr James:Let's talk on that. Actually and here's another thing that people are obsessed about, or certainly associates are anyway splits, like percentage split, because 50% is a rarity these days. Have I got that right?
Eddie:Yeah, yeah, no, no, definitely, definitely. And it goes back to what we were talking about about the running costs of practices. You know when the inflation, inflation and, let's be honest, you know, Brexit made a difference to the running costs of a dental practice, because most of these materials come in from the EU equipment and the spare parts and everything that you might need, the cost of heating, lighting, energy costs for running a dental practice everything has been going through the bloody roof. And to expect you know, that you go in and you work and you take half of what you've earned and half of that is going to be enough for the practice to operate and actually give some profit back to the person who's invested all the money in the practice, I think he's unrealistic.
Dr James:You know, I heard something and this is slightly controversial. I'm not saying I agree with this, okay, but there's a figure that people throw around and apparently, if you do the math and you really want a fair split in terms of running cost versus profitability, the figure for the associate is somewhere around the 28.5% Mark. I don't know if you've ever heard this before.
Eddie:I haven't heard that. No, actually, I'm going to give you 30% of what you gross. I think you'd probably have quite a big vacancy level within your practice because I don't think. You know, as I say, I think it's an associate-driven market at the moment and you know I am with other elements of the of the support team as well.
Eddie:You know, I've heard of stories where a practice has been down a nurse. They had to go out to an agency to recruit a dental nurse or a DCP to come in and support them and that person has been earning, you know, 50 percent more than the existing staff, earning you know 50% more than the existing staff. And then you know you've got that person in the practice for a while, talking to the other members of the staff and say you know what, come and work on this agency because you can earn 50% more. You know it's destabilizing. So you know wages and we know, we know people were leaving.
Eddie:You know, after having worked through the pandemic with all that level of PPE or having to do CPD, having to register, you know dental nurses were leaving in droves because they were earning far more with a less stressful job, probably working in a local supermarket, and that is awful that you've got that educated workforce that is drifting away. Some of them will have obviously gone off and found jobs in private practice, where they'll probably be remunerated slightly better, and and so the job market across the whole of dentistry is really, really interesting to see the way it's come out of the pandemic you know, one thing I think is super interesting to talk on, Eddie, because I know that you naturally converse with a lot of mps when I say mps, I mean members of parliament, to be specific.
Dr James:I know that that's something that you do on a daily basis, or at least fairly regularly. I just want to know how well do they actually understand what we're talking about right now, like what's going on with dentistry, because and in fairness my heart goes out to them a little bit because they've got so many plates to spin and so much bandwidth, naturally they're never going to get dentistry as well as somebody who's embroiled in it day to day. But of course, the more they understand about about it, the more they can actually do something about it in parliament yeah, you know, I think there's a what like, like society in general.
Eddie:There's a wide variety of people. I think you know it probably won't be a popular view, but I think the vast majority of backbench mps that I've met they met. You know I've virtually met all the liberal democrat mps now because they're all from dental deserts. You know they went from four mps to that. I've met. You know I've virtually met all the Liberal Democrat MPs now because they're all from dental deserts. You know they went from four MPs to 72, so they got 68 new MPs in the general election. But you know I've met people from all across all parties and there's a wide variance in their enthusiasm to actually find out more.
Eddie:Some come with a preconception. Some, you know some believe that this is a workforce problem and therefore if we train more dentists in their particular area we're going to solve the problem. So you know you hear calls for a new dental school in the east of England. You hear calls for a new dental school in the east of England. But the last two dental schools that were built in Plymouth and Preston, you know that hasn't solved the access problems in those areas. So I have to spend a bit of time educating some of these beliefs that they've got, but the vast majority do want to understand it and they want to understand why there's a difference between the funding model between us and general medical practice, why they? They understand that obviously we're uh contractors who can provide both private and nhs. Um, they understand the logistics. They understand that the contracts are not fit for purpose.
Eddie:Um, you know I, I could spend a whole week in parliament. You know I I went to the liberal democrat conference in. It was in brighton this year. I was only supposed to go there for one day and I had 10, 10 meetings scheduled and, uh, I had a little place where I sat and they all came over to meet and then the queue got bigger. It was like opening a new dental practice. They weren't quite queuing around the block but I had to come back the following day. I had to go back to London, stay overnight and come back the following day because the enthusiasm to find out more about what was going on and why, when they were going out and canvassing during the general election, they were knocking on the door and someone would come to the door with a mouth that looked like. You know that they were in victorian times. They really got it that dentistry was a very big thing for them.
Eddie:And I've met other politicians who've won a seat on a very small majority. You know maybe a few hundred seats. I met an ENT surgeon who didn't believe he'd win you know they'd never had a Labour MP in his particular constituency but he won and he said to me you know what, if we don't fix dentistry, I'm not going to win the next election. So I think a lot of politicians get it, get the importance of it.
Eddie:I think as backbenchers they're very limited on how much pressure they can put on the minister. You see multiple questions that they submit or they get involved in a debate in parliament. They submit or they get involved in a debate in parliament and stock answers come back all the time about yes, this is what we're doing, we're rolling out 700,000 extra appointments, we're introducing supervised toothbrush and we're doing this, we're doing that and the actual level of debate that's there and the understanding is not always there and the the actual response from the minister is always somewhat disappointing, I think. But they, they, they continue to, to, to want to know and and to find some killer questions to actually put in well, you know what I mean.
Dr James:that's a positive in and of itself, because there's so many considerations surrounding the country that even for dentistry to be in the conversation is massive. Like that is massive, and it comes from what you're saying. It's hard to ignore how many constituents they must have. They just can't get access to dentistry. It's on the news semi-regularly, isn't it?
Eddie:It's on the news semi-regularly, isn't it? Well, I mean ridiculously. Last Friday, you know I had a call to be on Good Morning Britain and BBC Breakfast and I couldn't obviously do both. I went up to Manchester and did BBC Breakfast and they did a pre-record of an interview with me and bizarrely I was on both news channels at virtually the same time last Friday. And you know, considering dentistry's you know 3% spend of the NHS budget the media coverage that we've had over this has just been phenomenal. You know, I've just done an interview this morning for a piece that's going to be on local the East of England news tonight. And you know, get radio interviews all the way. You know what we plant into the headlines but you know it's insatiable because they know the public respond to it. You know, and when you've got 13 million people who can't gain access in England at the moment, you know and maybe only you know 3% of dental practices are taking on new patients on the NHS. This is a massive problem and it gets plenty of media coverage.
Dr James:One more thing I wanted to touch on out of interest and I've kind of got somewhat of an understanding of this, but you'll more than likely know a lot more than me Sugar tax. They keep saying they're going to bring increased sugar tax in, right, but then they keep delaying it. That's what happens, right? Have I got that correct?
Eddie:Yeah, yeah, I mean what we've seen in the soft drinks industry levy the tax on carbonated drinks. What we've seen is manufacturers actually reformulate and that's been a positive. But it has raised a huge amount of money in revenue. And I was at a meeting in Parliament this week with other stakeholders the Obesity Health Alliance and some other dietary lobby groups and some people who were working in free school meals and people who were supporting food banks and things looking to actually do far more.
Eddie:I'm involved in a panorama program that's coming at the end of April about baby pouches where, you know, these things are being targeted at six-month-old kids have got more sugar than the average can of Fanta. You know there's so much more we could do to improve the oral health of the population and other things diabetes and obesity and other cardiac problems that are related to the sugar in foodstuffs. There is a bit of reluctance about the Nanny State thing. They had quite a bit of a pushback on their supervised toothbrushing initiative, you know, and especially from the teachers' unions who think that they're being dumped with it. But you know, if we can convince a chancellor who's looking for money that there's money to be made from the sugar added to, you know common foodstuffs, then that is a door we need to keep pushing her.
