I wrote a letter published July 17 asking Tom Brake MP for an apology because he claimed “Liberal Democrats will never let the NHS be privatised” when quite plainly the NHS is being privatised.

Instead of an apology Lib Dem supporter Alex Vicente-Machado wrote on August 21 not about privatisation, but about a Keep Our St Helier Hospital party May Council election leaflet.

The £20bn figure may have started with Nicholson, but Lansley enshrined it in his July 2010 paper: Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS, signed by both Cameron and Clegg: “The NHS will release up to £20bn of efficiency savings by 2014, which will be reinvested to support improvements in quality and outcomes.”

Saleh Mamon’s letter (Your Say, September 4) outlined the catastrophic results for patients in the real world that the so-called “reinvested,” so-called “efficiency savings” have delivered.

I can add to Saleh’s list. Half the senior posts in accident and emergency are now left vacant; GP surgeries are facing closure leaving patients without a doctor; targets are imposed on GPs to lower their hospital referrals; referrals may be checked and sanctioned by people with little or no clinical training and no knowledge of the patient; facilities are closed so twice as many patients have been forced to travel out of area for mental health services as two years ago, a huge barrier to treatment to already vulnerable people.

Lib Dem MP Tom Brake voted in the health bill that made such cuts possible to a NHS that before such changes was rated by the Commonwealth Fund the best performing health service in the G7.

It is not too late for that apology.

DAVID MURRAY

Blenheim Gardens

Wallington


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