Never has it been harder to find an NHS dentist. They have become a species as rare as sparrows in inner cities, with large bills or insurance plans the only remedy for a desperate patient with raging toothache.

The Office of Fair Trading is now preparing to publish a report on the dental market, following an investigation into the way prices are fixed. This presents a golden opportunity for light to be shed on the arcane and secretive way fees are decided, as well as on the relationship between the NHS and the private market. The OFT could start simply, by insisting that every dental practice displays a list of its treatment fees on a board in the waiting-room. It should require that fees are agreed before treatment begins, not when the patient is captive in the chair. And it should demand an independent regulator to handle complaints about private work; currently, the only redress is to go to court.

Never has it been more necessary. Dentists are free to be registered NHS practitioners even if they only do a tiny amount of NHS work. Yet this year, for the first time, their income from private work will outstrip their NHS earnings. Is this purely greed? Many dentists argue, with some justification, that they have little choice but to go down the private route, because the amounts paid by the NHS for performing, say, an extraction or root-canal work do not begin to compensate them for the time they spend on the patient, let alone fund necessary new equipment.

Successive governments, including this one, have battled with the problem, but have never battled hard enough to find the right solution. Labour should now make a hard choice; either pay dentists sufficiently to make NHS work attractive or abandon the absurd pretence that NHS dentistry, available to all, exists any longer.