In response to Wes Streeting saying that he is a binge drinker, your correspondent (Letters, 20 June) suggests health ministers shouldn’t lead an unhealthy lifestyle. When my neighbour Frank Dobson was health secretary in the early years of the Blair government, I opened my front door one morning to see him striding past in the direction of parliament, a couple of miles away. “Frank,” I said. “Shouldn’t you be in a ministerial limo working on your red boxes?” He said his papers were indeed in a car on its way to Westminster – but on their own. He added that he’d been told to “shape up and lead by example”, and patted his comfortable girth with a chuckle.
Albert Beale
London
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