SIR - At a stroke of the pen, 7,000 people are removed as NHS patients from a Worcester Practice. Yet more local victims of the creeping privatisation of dental care.

Ministers anxious to soften the impact of the escalating crisis may well point to the facility of NHS Dental Access Centres which, theoretically, ensure everyone not listed with a NHS dentist can get treatment. But they are not in every town, and imagine the strain these places will come under now as more dentists show a clean pair of heels to the NHS.

ANDREW BROWN,

Worcester.