So, about 45 per cent of the patients who receive NHS dental treatment at the moment are exempt from patient charges as it is, and then, when patients are charged, if you look at how much they’re charged in Wales compared to England, on band 1, people are charged £14.70 in Wales while, in England, it’s £23.80; on band 2, it's £47 in Wales, £65.20 in England. So, we recognise that, actually, also, we do need to make sure that there’s an ability for those who are not eligible for free treatment, especially during a cost-of-living crisis, that we’ve frozen the amount that people have to pay.

I think dentists, we’ve got to understand, are private contractors. We can’t force them to work for the NHS. So, whilst I’d love to say to you, Russell, ‘Of course we want to offer this to everybody’, I simply don’t have the power to do that, because they have to decide whether they want to pick up this option or not. Now, what we have to do is to work with them to see how far we can go with this, and the reality is that, actually, certainly this year, 80 per cent of them have picked up that new contract. What we’ve found is that when we’ve put out those contracts, they have been returned, and actually there’s an appetite to take them up. So, it may be that it’ll be different next year, but our current experience is telling us that, actually, the appetite is there. And whilst they did suggest, for example, that they were a bit upset, that they needed more time to consider the contract, I think we’ve learnt from that last year, which is why the contract variation offer this year was issued before Christmas. So, they’ve had more time to do that.

Obviously, I’m meeting with the British Dental Association in the next couple of weeks, and let me tell you that in Powys, 3,392 new patients have been seen this year.