You said that the BDA is nonpartisan, because you have to work with governments of all types
and Does the, does the BDA take a political side though,
before an election, because obviously you will see the party's,
um, plans for what they say they're going to do. You can obviously take that with a pinch of
salt, um.
Does the BDA ever take a does the BDA ever take a formal uh position on that?
You mentioned Brexit earlier on as well, and of course that was a divisive issue across the
country, but I know there was there was some division within the the BDA obviously as well,
um, you know, I'm not, I'm not sure it was a 52, 48 split,
um, but, um.
Yeah, I mean it it it did cause some political upheavals with especially with the chair of the
general practise Committee at the time, who was, uh, you know,
a known advocate of um of opposition to er to the European Union.
But um we um I think, I think we took a, a fairly pragmatic approach to
the general election, uh in that we, we saw the writing on the wall for the Conservatives.
I don't think you have to be a, Uh, you know, a top gambler to work out that the,
that, that the general election was probably gonna go in Labour's favour,
and I invested huge amounts of time in, uh, briefing Preet Gill,
who was a Birmingham MP so I had the opportunity to meet her fairly frequently and
show her around and take her to the Birmingham Dental Hospital and take her to quite a lot of
dental practises and explain to her what the problems were.
Uh, but they, you know, come the general election, we,
we, we got to meet Wes Freeing on his first day in office.
She wasn't there. I asked him where she was,
and he said, well, we haven't decided who's going to be the minister for dentist or,
or the Prime Minister hasn't decided yet, um.
But you know, uh, we, we've got uh elections coming up in the Senedd and the Scottish
um er parliaments er next year, and we will construct a manifesto,
er or a um uh you know, a a a a lobbying manifesto for,
for all parties. I mean, I was pleased that I,
You know, I, I, I've got to speak to nearly all the political parties,
you know, I, I went to the um the conference of uh the Liberal Democrats in in Brighton last
year, I only was going for one day, um, but they've gone from 40,
uh sorry, 4 MPs to 72, so.
Um, and nearly all of them are from areas of dental desert,
um, so they all wanted to talk about, you know, what dentistry was all about.
And, and nearly every politician I've met and met probably over 200,
um, so that they were amazed when they were going out on the election campaign,
just how often dentistry cropped up on the doorstep, and not only did it crop up a lot on
the doorstep, they were amazed by some people coming to the door.
And their poor oral health, you know, seeing people with one or two teeth,
I think he quite shocked them, uh, just how widespread, sadly dental neglect is across the
population because of poor access and various other issues that are there.