The survey of nine European countries found the total cost of a standard filling ranged from €156 (£117) in England to €8 in Hungary. That total included the cost of x-rays, materials, drugs and overheads, as well as the dentist’s time.

The findings come amid growing dissatisfaction with dentistry in Britain and shrinking NHS provision. The Government admitted last March that two million patients who wanted NHS treatment were unable to get it, eight years after Tony Blair pledged at the Labour Party conference in 1999 that everyone would have access to an NHS dentist.

Dentists have dramatically increased their private work over the past decade, at the expense of their NHS work, and when a new NHS practice opens, desperate patients queue to register.

Dentists with their own practices earned an average of £105,000 in 2004-05. More than half their total income (52.4 per cent) came from private work, up from 41.8 per cent in 1999-2000. In 1990 it was 6 per cent.

While England topped the table as the most expensive country for dentistry at €156 for a filling, it was closely followed by Italy (€135) and Spain (€125). Costs in the other western European countries were less than half as much, ranging from €67 in Germany to €46 in France.

In all European healthcare systems, the greater the cost of carrying out dental work, the greater the level of government subsidy required to keep the price of dental treatment down for patients.

The cheapest countries for treatment were Poland (€18) and Hungary (€8), the main destinations for dental tourists from Britain. Savings of thousands of pounds are promised by agencies that arrange treatment in these countries, even after paying the cost of flights and hotel bills. Read more