DENTAL COMPANIES (RESTRICTION OF PRACTICE) BILL [H.L.] (Hansard, 29 April 1907)

§ LORD HYLTON

My Lords, this Bill is entirely on all fours with the preceding one. There was a question, as I understand, whether it was more appropriate to put the two subjects in one Bill or divide them, and the General Medical Council expressed the desire that the subjects should be dealt with in separate Bills. I will not weary your Lordships by repeating the arguments which you have been good enough to consider worthy of recognition in regard to the Bill to which you have just given a Second Reading. Your Lordships will observe that there is a slight difference in the two Bills, and it is on a point upon which the noble Earl the Lord President of the Council remarked just now. This Bill does not propose to make it illegal for a company to practice dentistry provided that all the managers and assistants are duly registered dentists. It has been thought that there should be a distinction in this matter between dentists and duly qualified medical men. I beg to move that the Bill be read a second time.

THE EARL OF CREWK

My Lords, this Bill, as your Lordships will see, is really complementary to the other, with the slight but not unimportant difference mentioned bythe noble Lord. I quite agree that it would be a hardship to prevent these dental companies from being formed, provided they employ registered and duly qualified men. The dentist is in a different position from the doctor in this respect, that he presides in his own torture chamber and very rarely invades the domestic circle. Therefore, the arguments which apply to the doctor do not in the same way apply to him. I hope this Bill will also be read a second time, and I venture to suggest that it should be referred to the same Committee as the previous Bill.