Your front page story, about a woman with mental health issues spending the night in police cells following a lack of available beds in Green Lane Hospital, is a shameful example of how patients with mental health issues are treated in the UK.

However, when the facts are considered, it’s hardly surprising that incidents like this occur. In the last five years, demand for mental health services has increased by 20 per cent and yet mental health service budgets have on average been cut eight per cent in real terms during the same period. An increase in spending has finally been announced but one wonders if it will be sufficient to address years of neglect and cuts.

It may well be that the Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership has a case to answer in this instance, but underfunding of this level, coupled with a huge increase in demand, would have a tremendously detrimental effect on the quality of service any organisation can offer.

If we are serious about finding the reasons behind incidents like the one you reported, it is to our government and its elected representatives we should be addressing the questions, not overstretched NHS organisations tasked with the near impossible.

SIMON THOMPSON, Devizes Green Party, Woodford Close, Devizes