In a speech to Trimdon Labour Club on April 30, 1997, Tony Blair promised: "The very simple choice that people have in this next 24 hours is this. It is 24 hours to save our National Health Service."

In a speech to the Scottish Labour Conference on March 12, 1995, Gordon Brown promised: "From today, a campaign must begin - not just to renationalise the National Health Service, but to save the National Health Service for the people of Britain."

Yet in 2005-06, the NHS was more than £1.3bn in the red; more than 20,000 job losses have been announced by NHS hospitals in England in the last year; 17 accident and emergency departments, 105 community hospitals and 43 maternity units are under threat of cutbacks and closure; and almost one million people in the UK are still waiting for treatment on the NHS.

Is this not another example of how Labour continues to fail the people of Britain and Oxfordshire?

Geoffrey Brooking, Paradise Street, Oxford