I welcome the turnaround by Oxfordshire County Council who have now conceded that it can, after all, afford to provide free dial-a-ride services.

When pressed in council by Labour, the ruling Tory administration have claimed that they couldn’t afford it. But suddenly they have looked again at their calculations.

I suspect that they have rather cynically decided that the paltry savings they would have made were outweighed by the vote-losing potential presented by the excellent campaign mounted by local disabled passengers’ groups.

Effective protests are the way we can all fight the senseless, low-cost cuts that the county is hell-bent on imposing on minority groups while it still finds money to commission grandiose schemes like the unpopular multi-million-pound Cogges Link Road.

John Sanders, Labour county spokesman on transport, County Hall