THE news from The Press (January 7) that in October of last year 222 people had to wait in A&E in York for more than eight hours before being treated (seven a day) with at least one patient having to wait on a trolley for almost 15 hours makes quite alarming reading.

While we are becoming quite used to longer waiting hours in hospitals up and down the country it is an unacceptable fact to contend with.

So much for the brag from the Tory Government that they are putting more and more money into the NHS.

What Government ministers do not tell the electorate about is the hundreds of millions of pounds the NHS is expected to make every year in efficiency savings.

Money in through the front door in a hail of publicity and then smuggled out through the back door in secrecy, so to speak.

It seems quite clear to me and other people that the Tories are preparing to privatise the NHS.

I am led to believe that the Chancellor’s recent Autumn Statement did not have a single mention of NHS, public health or social care in a full 72-page report.

If the electorate of Great Britain does not wish to go back to the days before the NHS was created in this country, when it was the case that if you didn’t have money or private insurance to cover your health treatment you just had to suffer and die in silence, then they had better wake up and consider where they put their cross on a ballot paper.

Howard Perry, Dringhouses, York