AS A Conservative councillor of long-standing and sometime member of Hampshire Hospitals Foundation Trust, Councillor Reid has been knowledgeable about the run-down of the NHS over the past fourteen years (last month’s ‘critical incident’ is just another indication of how bad things are).

Funding doubts have come, not from us ungrateful, ignorant and overly suspicious peasants in Basingstoke, but from the Public Accounts Committee in Westminster.

READ MORE: 'People stirring up doubt about hospital funding are wrong' 

What would be doing a gross disservice to the community and to our local NHS would be to ignore that very clear warning.

While our local NHS works hard to deliver that desperately needed new hospital, we also need to work hard, holding the Government’s feet to the fire to make sure that the funding is there as soon as it is needed. It’s the completeness and accuracy of what the Government is telling the NHS (and the rest of us) that is in question.

Councillor Reid admits that we may not believe him. But I will believe him when he says that this hospital is ‘the new hospital that we so badly need’.

In truth, we needed it last month - which makes it about 10 years late already.

Yours sincerely,

Will Haines,

Northfield Road

Sherfield on Loddon

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