MR McAvoy may not like my expression "creative accountant's handbook," but it's winkled out of him the fact that the figures he used as the "costs of road accidents to our community" are actually Department of Transport "estimates!"

That means they might just as well be from the "Mad Hatters Tea Party!" My "excessive figures," on Worcestershire's safety camera operations are extrapolated from the raw data he supplied.

If he doesn't like them, he can always provide the precise raw data, instead of the bureaucratic obfuscation which seems to have become his standard response to questions.

I think we are now entitled to treat the Safety Camera Partnership's figures with derision. Mr McAvoy's department has quoted two different sets of accident figures, and now forecasts its entire operational costs as £5.3m, for the next two financial years.

Does Mr McAvoy not remember his department saying that 10 new cameras would cost £5.3m to set up and operate over two years?

Mr McAvoy says "that there can be no truth whatever in any suggestion that the insurance industry pays all the national health costs of road accidents."

Would he explain why the insurance industry paid £100m to the NHS in 2001/02, and will pay a predicted £160m in 2002/03, to cover the NHS's road accident treatment costs?

And why doesn't he publish the audited figures (per camera site) on his website?

Or are we the people being kept in the dark, because Labour politicians want to hide the size of their mug-the-motorist-by-machine goldmine?

N TAYLOR,

Worcester.