Sir – I hope you will allow me to reply to two letters (August 19) criticising the county council’s decision on speed camera funding?

To John Bates of Abingdon, my answer is a single word: “democracy”.

I am proud of the fact that our county council cabinet meets and takes its decisions in public. It is about accountability and I am afraid that, once in a while, it gives us difficulties.

How much easier if we could have quietly told the Thames Valley Safer Roads Partnership to switch off their cameras but where would that stop?

How many decisions could we/should we take in secret? I believe it should be as few as possible and only for the most pressing of public policy reasons.

Who knows, perhaps one day the country’s cabinet might meet in public, at least once in a while?

To councillor Mrs Jean Fooks, my answer is, similarly, a single word. It is: “coalition”. The county council has cut its funding for road cameras because the Liberal-Conservative coalition Government in Whitehall has cut our road safety funding as part of an agreed coalition policy.

Councillor Mrs Fooks may try to wriggle out of that simple truth and pretend that local Liberal policies are somehow disconnected from Liberal policies nationally but that simply won’t wash.

Come on, councillor Mrs Fooks, come straight with your local electorate; we are in this together, after all.

Keith R Mitchell, Leader of the council, County Hall, Oxford