Your anonymous correspondent suggests private dentists pay £2,000 a week (£104,000 a year) for a licence (Letters, May 8).

In the unlikely event this would happen, their fees would simply go up to cover that cost - the licence money would go to the Government to throw away on one of its hare-brained schemes and low income people would be even less able to afford treatment.

But why stop there? Surely, one should then apply this idea to all high-earning professionals, so slap the licence "tax" on solicitors, estate agents, accountants, private doctors, chiropodists, tattooists, body-piercers, masseurs, lap dancers - and anyone else who legally derives an income envied by anonymous letter writers.

-Dr M Boyask BDS, ex-NHS dentist - gratefully retired