Sir - There has been a lot of controversy recently about the state of the health service with Labour saying they have a solution which is to follow the Blair / Brown policy of borrowing money to correct the situation.

The current Labour leadership has conveniently forgotten that they were part of the changes made by Blair which has put the health service in the mess it is in now.

Before Blair took office GP’s ran their own out of hour’s service where a GP would cover out of hour’s calls for their colleagues with the assistance of a private communications company having trained nurses taking the calls and passing them onto the duty GP.

There was also local general hospitals with up to 1000 beds available running 24hr A&E services. GP’s also opened on a Saturday morning. Blair’s changes to the health service removed the Saturday surgeries, closed down the GP ran out of hours services, downgraded the local general hospitals in favour of fewer acute hospitals providing A&E services. Blair also created the Trust organisations and increased the hospital administration personnel levels with managers etc. by some 70%.

What is needed now is for the return of the local general hospitals with their 24hr A&E departments, the removal of the unrequired Trust system and all the unwanted administrators with the financial savings going into medical staff.

We also need the return of the localised GP ran out of hours service which would remove the need to attend A&E when it is not a emergency. Just throwing more money for hospital managers to waste will not cure the problem.

R.Knight.

Newport, Shropshire.