I READ with a growing sense of outrage in your pages that Tory-controlled North Yorkshire County Council is having to dip into its budget to offer support to those households which, as a result of the present-day economic climate, find themselves in difficult financial circumstances (Pleas for help with bills and food nearly double, July 18).

It was of course the Tory-dominated coalition that brought in the disastrous austerity measures 13 years ago, which led to the appalling cuts in the social budget, the consequences of which we are seeing with a collapsing NHS, a grotesque shortage of hospital beds, NHS dentists and GPs and a lack of trained carers for an ever-growing population of vulnerable citizens.

We also have a government that has wilfully neglected to do anything effective about the private rental housing sector, where vast sums of money are shovelled from the state into the pockets of landlords for what is often sub-standard housing.

Surely the council leader, Mr Carl Les, has to realise that his continued membership of the Tory party machine, albeit on a local level, has contributed greatly to the parlous situation in which many of his constituents now find themselves?

John Taylor, Dringhouses, York