Sir – Today I received through the post an expensive leaflet from John Howell , Tory MP for the Henley constituency.
In it he justifies the Coalition’s reform of the NHS with the claim that if the NHS was performing at world-class levels we could save an extra 5,000 lives from cancer every year. Of course this is a lazy crib from an old Downing Street press release which was widely discredited at the time, but the facts are worth repeating.
The statistic comes from the period 1985 to 1999, when the party in charge was — oh yes, John Howell’s own Tories.
The NHS really did need reforming then, with poor cancer survival rates, long queues for treatment and bed shortages every winter. That’s why the last Labour Government invested so much in health and transformed the performance of the service. The NHS is doing a great job now, John. Stop knocking it.
Dr Will Atkinson, Culham
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