I READ with interest your story about Wantage Town Councillor Ben Mabbett’s delight at the response to a town-wide health survey which revealed the vast majority want A&E and other services provided locally.

It’s staggering to see yet another Tory councillor seemingly unaware that it’s the policies of his own party that are driving these cuts.

Sometimes I wonder if these people ever actually read their own manifestos or bother to do any research into what is going on in this country beyond the self affirming claptrap that the Tory party spits out to local constituency parties.

In a demonstration of cognitive dissonance that must be visible from space, Conservative MPs and councillors across the county are bemoaning the bed losses and cuts being foisted on the NHS under the guise of a ‘sustainability and transformation plans’.

Victoria Prentis in Banbury regularly pops up in the media highlighting the problems for mothers after maternity services were downgraded at the Horton, but she’s yet to get to the real crux of the matter – the policies of the government of which she is a willing participant.

These programmes are the brainchild of none other than Jeremy Hunt, the Tory Health Secretary.

Yes they are being administered by the local health trusts, but that’s the way the Tories have set the system up. Hand theoretical control to local bodies who then also shoulder the blame for cuts they have no choice but to make due to underfunding.

It’s a massive hypocritical con being perpetrated on the entire country that councillors like Mr Mabbett and MPs like Ms Prentis are helping to propagate.

It’s as if they’ve suddenly emerged from an ideological cave, blinking in the reality of where their own actions have led them.

Yet instead of damning those that entombed them, they blame the sunshine for hurting their eyes.

We don’t need surveys and campaigns, T-shirts and placards, we need such representatives – who were elected to protect the people not their party – to wake up, stand up, and publicly disavow the policies of they themselves have facilitated.

IAN MIDDLETON Green Party Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Banbury