Waste and health cuts

Published: 25th March 2010

• IT is plain wrong to say that Liberal Democrats have championed NHS privatisation, as Councillor Adrian Oliver claims (Letters, March 4).
The Lib Dems have long attacked Labour’s assault on the NHS and its “Whitehall-knows-best” approach.
The local Labour MP, when he was health secretary, set up the bureaucratic primary care trusts that are pushing through privatisation.
The Lib Dems would put those using services in charge.
It’s unlikely that the people of Camden would think that forking out £158million to private firms for work worth only £32million to do up the Whittington’s acute hospital services department was a good idea.
Neither would residents think that after spending all this money to then withdraw services at the Whittington was a good plan.
But the bureaucrats Labour’s put in charge of our NHS seem to think that wasting money meant for the front-line services, then cutting those services, is a very good idea indeed.
LEE BAKER
Regent Square
WC1