Polly Toynbee is right to condemn the government’s policies and rhetoric about the NHS (Who do you believe: the brilliant NHS staff who treated my cancer, or ministers who spin and lie?, 14 December). But the policies of the Labour party might extend a little; it could, for example, propose the return of full bursaries for trainee nurses and challenge the restrictions on the number of medical school places. The issues clearly involve questions of finance. But they also involve confronting structural questions about the willingness of the state to train and employ enough people to work in the public sector. The underlying hidden agenda of restrictions on education, for work in those public institutions that support us all, demands rebuttal.
Mary Evans
Patrixbourne, Kent
• Polly Toynbee refers to “rightwingers using this crisis to proclaim the death of the NHS idea”. In the 1980s, a friend working in social care attended a meeting at which a senior Tory patronisingly told her: “My dear, when historians look back from the next century, the welfare state will be seen as just a blip.” Why don’t they just admit their ideological goal of dismantling it?
David Simpson
London
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