WITH a final decision imminent on the future of Malmesbury Hospital, the Government has indicated what it thinks of the demand of the town and surrounding villages that this vital health facility must be maintained.

Health ministers have told local MP James Gray that they cannot even be bothered to give a formal response to our petition submitted to Parliament and urging that the hospital be saved.

We should have no doubt what this indicates. Barbara Smith, paid £100,000 a year to be the chief executive of Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust, has clearly decided in line with the contempt shown for us by the health ministers who appointed her that the quality of health services in Malmesbury is to be rounded down.

She should be rounding up other services in North Wiltshire to match the commendably high standards offered in Malmesbury.

When Ms Smith makes her announcement, it should be judged by one criterion. Has her first step been to save millions of pounds by axing bureaucrats and reducing their ratio to front line health care workers to something like that in the private sector?

To even ask the question would make me laugh were this issue not so serious for the town and villages.

For we can all be sure that there will be no cut back in bureaucrats. Yet more will be employed in the months and years ahead.

This Government likes publicly paid bureaucrats. As has been pointed out before in your columns, these employees are more likely to please Blair and Brown by voting Labour.

As I write I have at my side the document issued by the trust at its sickly debate in Malmesbury on the hospital's future.

It is entitled Your Heath, Your NHS, Your Say. We've had our say. Now Ms Smith and the other Labour flunkeys will do what Blair and Brown are paying them for to diminish our health services and save £11 million a year.

And all this at a time when workers and employers are compelled to pay more taxes through higher National Insurance contributions allegedly for better health care.

After her announcement, Miss Smith will no doubt get back to doing what she's good at giving the go ahead for the all-weather shelter for which the trust has secured planning permission so that her growing army of bureaucrats can smoke outside their offices without fear of catching a cold.

THOMAS BLACK

Sherston