How sad that Claire Perry MP should sour the brilliant co- operation between Prospect Hospice and Great Western Hospital to open the hospice’s outpatient centre at Savernake Hospital (October 9).

But her swipe at the last government for “senselessly hollowing out” Savernake Hospital was predictable. Perhaps this sour reaction is down to the failure of her campaign to restore the Minor Injuries Unit (MIU) to Savernake Hospital.

The decision to close the MIU was not made by central government but was a local decision by the then Wiltshire Primary Care Trust (PCT). On her logic we should all be blaming her government for not reinstating the Savernake MIU.

Wiltshire PCT was facing a huge inherited deficit of £63m – partly from the former Kennet and North West Wiltshire commissioning body, which had arranged the costly PFI to upgrade Savernake Hospital. Mrs Perry should have been praising the PCT for reducing the deficit to zero so allowing the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), which succeeded the PCT, to start work with no deficit.

Instead of praise she insulted the PCT calling them “unelected quangocrats” who made decisions in backrooms. And that from the MP who in 2010 said she would not resort to “Punch and Judy politics”.

We are seeing this week the results of her government’s “hollowing out” of the wage packets of hard-pressed, hard-working NHS staff. And, locally, her government’s record on “hollowing out” our local NHS is not good either.

At the start of a budget year the ‘real term’ increase of 0.1 per cent in Wiltshire CCG’s annual budget was greeted with politicians’ huzzahs.

During the year the CCG was told to save one per cent of its budget. By the end of the year it achieved this saving and the money saved (£5 million) went back to the Treasury. Another commissioning success received in silence by our MP. One-and-a-half per cent of the amount returned to the Treasury would have covered the sum currently needed to complete Prospect’s most welcome centre at Savernake Hospital. We should also note that the present government have had four-and-a-half years to establish a minor injury service and a primary care centre for Devizes – both of which Mrs Perry claimed could be delivered now that clinicians were in charge of commissioning for the county. Where are they?

Tony Millett, Marlborough.