Exclusive: Chancellor at £100-an-hour private clinic

Gordon Brown: Uses private dentist
13 April 2012

Gordon Brown's fierce opposition to private medicine was called into question last night after it was revealed that he pays £100 an hour to be treated by one of Britain's top private dentists.

The Chancellor had routine treatment last week at the London Centre for Cosmetic Dentistry, which is run by a wealthy dentist who boasts of celebrity patients.

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Despite its name, 80 per cent of its work involves routine general treatment.

It caters exclusively for private patients and does not offer NHS treatment.

Mr Brown was photographed leaving the practice on Wednesday after having root canal treatment.

In the second of two half-hour sessions, practice owner Mervyn Druian cleaned out a dead nerve end and fitted a crown to one of Mr Brown's teeth.

The Chancellor will shortly be sent a bill that could run into several hundred pounds once lab fees are added.

The disclosure that Mr Brown, who has fought hard to stop Tony Blair introducing private-sector methods into the National Health Service, has gone private may shock some of his Left-wing supporters.

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But the Chancellor's allies played down his use of private medicine and cited the lack of NHS dentists - even though critics have blamed Government policies for the shortage.

"Using a private dentist is not the same as using a private doctor," said one friend of the Chancellor.

"Gordon is no different to the large number of people who have found themselves without an NHS dentist because he did not visit one regularly.

"If you have toothache, you have to find a dentist quickly and to do that you have little choice but to go private. It is not like arranging an appointment with your GP."

But South African-born Mr Druian said that Mr Brown had been a regular patient at his practice on the edge of London's fashionable Hampstead district since he left the NHS to go private nearly 20 years ago.

The Chancellor has had routine dental treatment and also used Mr Druian's hygienist.

He told The Mail on Sunday: "Mr Brown is like many of my patients who opt for private treatment because they can phone me up in the morning and get an appointment the same day if they need one.

"We are not jam-packed with other patients so we can fit people in when they want.

"We have been looking after Mr Brown for such a long time and people don't usually like to change their dentist.

"We are basically a general dentist but we changed our name to a "cosmetic centre" because we wanted our patients to know that if they needed cosmetic dentistry, they did not need to go elsewhere."

Mr Druian, 60, said of Mr Brown's treatment last week: "He came because the nerve ending in one of his teeth was decayed. We cleaned everything out and fitted a crown. He was fine."

There have been persistent reports that Mr Brown has had cosmetic dental treatment from Mr Druian to improve his smile in recent years. Mr Druian said: "I'm not going into that."

He later said he had not given cosmetic treatment to Mr Brown.

"Mr Brown is unbelievably charming, he is great," he added. "I charge £100 an hour, with laboratory costs on top."

Mr Druian came to Britain from South Africa 25 years ago and launched his private practice in 1989 after Tory reforms to NHS dentistry.

Mr Druian learned his cosmetic dentistry skills in New York where he trained with 'dentist to the stars' Larry Rosenthal, whose patients include Catherine Zeta-Jones and Julia Roberts.

Mr Druian's website mentions both film stars.

He prides himself on offering cosmetic techniques imported from the boutique surgeries of Manhattan that can turn anyone's crooked, yellowing teeth into a gleaming, Hollywood-style smile using peroxide bleaching and porcelain veneers.

His website boasts of his ability to 'renovate almost any deformity of the teeth. Imagine a patient leaping out of their dentist's chair, looking into a mirror and shouting, "Wow! Fantastic, you've changed my life."'

Mr Druian even offers a Rolls-Royce service he calls a 'smile lift', or a 'face lift for the mouth'. Gaps are removed, jagged teeth are filed down and even the gum line can be evened out - but it can cost up to £9,000.

Celebrity patients of the surgery he runs with fellow South African Ken Spektor include Oasis singer Liam Gallagher and his girlfriend Nicole Appleton.

Mr Druian has appeared on television shows such as Extreme Makeover and Silicone Chicks for Living TV, and Celebrity Slimming for the Discovery Channel.

He also runs the grandly-styled London Breath Centre, which offers high-tech treatments for halitosis.

There are 63 dentists' practices in the Westminster area offering NHS services, 50 of which say they are accepting new patients; and there are 47 practices in the Belsize Park area where Mr Druian is based offering NHS services, of which 37 are accepting new patients.

But Tony Blair has experienced first-hand the anger of patients frustrated over the lack of NHS dentists.

Two years ago, during a live TV broadcast, part-time cleaner Valerie Holsworth told the Prime Minister how she had to pull out seven of her teeth - four using her husband's pliers and three with her fingers - rather than suffer in agony.

"It would be nice for somebody to take them out properly for me," the 65-year-old said. "I've been in so much pain, but I've not been able to find myself an NHS dentist because the waiting lists are full. Where I live, you can only get on the list if someone dies."

All Mr Blair could say in response was: "I can't suddenly just produce more dentists."

It is just one of the growing number of horror stories about people who can't find an NHS dentist but can't afford to go private either.

In November last year, a Liverpool man told how he was forced to use superglue to fix his teeth.

Critics say Britain's public dental system is more like that of a Third World country.

More than two million people have no access to an NHS dentist. There are only 3.7 NHS dentists per 10,000 people in England. That compares with about six dentists per 10,000 people in America.

Only 26 of England's 304 NHS Trusts are above the European average for dental provision, so on the rare occasions that new NHS practices open up, queues of hopeful patients often stretch around the block.

The situation has further deteriorated since the Government introduced new NHS contracts last April, with the number of dentists attached to the health service dropping from 21,111 on March 31 to 19,642 by the end of June.

The Dental Practitioners Association said that the eight per cent drop was compounded by the fact that the new contracts, which simplified pay scales, encouraged those dentists who remained to scale back their work for the NHS.

Many restrict their work to treating the children of their lucrative private patients.

Just 48 per cent of dentists' income comes from the health service, down from 54 per cent a year ago.

This increase in private work has taken the salaries of some dentists up to £150,000 a year, with one in ten earning more than £100,000.

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