Andrew Martin’s letter (“Flaws of the NHS” - 22 April) starts to discuss the problems and then descends into fiction. One of his anarchic remedies entails ‘shutting the NHS down lock stock and barrel and starting again’. This is a ludicrous suggestion and avoids properly confronting the facts as a sensible way forward.

He is wrong suggesting the EU having anything to do with G.P.’s conditions of contracts. The G.P.’s 2007 contract gave them a deal they could hardly refuse. I quote, “Dr Simon Fradd, who was one of British Medical Association's GP negotiators, said they were shocked by the approach taken by the government. They could not believe it when G.P.’s were given the chance not to do evening and weekend work for a 6% pay cut.” Since then of course, they have been able to negotiate their own terms for the provision of their services outside of normal hours of work. Some have received up to £3,000 for a weekend’s work.

For some 30 years, nurses and hospital care workers have been at the sharp end of wage cut-backs in real terms and the effects of the resultant staff shortages. These have driven once loyal, hard-working employees to despair and many have deserted the NHS in droves to take up posts with agencies who then rip off the NHS by charging colossal rates and pocketing the profits. What private employer on the face of the earth would hire and train its staff and then treat them so badly they would leave him and he would then have to hire them back at huge costs to meet his contracts?

The re-organisation of the NHS in the 1970’s provided a huge opportunity for bureaucracy to overpower it. Tier upon tier of NHS managers have since colluded with management consultants in sucking up our cash and destroying its essential character to their mutual financial benefit. They also gave themselves pensions from heaven leading to the collapse of the local government final salary scheme. Your readers surely won’t forget how a shame-faced Chairman of the DCH Trust, Robin Sequira departed for new pastures having presided over a ‘loss’ of £5 million. The Trust then employed the boss of a management consultancy at £2,800 per day to sort things out. After spending another £5 million on his firm’s advice, a solution was arrived at – sacking the front-line staff to cut the deficit!!!

I quote from the Daily Telegraph “NHS spending on management consultants paid £3,000 to £4,000 per day doubled between 2010 and 2014 to £640 million. Many were employed straight from university or were former NHS staff who were re-employed. The coalition had vowed to clamp down enough to employ an extra 2,000 nurses”. I presume that useless managers employ useless consultants and good managers don’t need consultants.

The world’s problems are only exemplified in the NHS. They overwhelm societies everywhere and undermine moral and ethical political leadership with our M.P.’s ‘side-line’ jobs. We are in an era of personal ambition, greed and wealth. None of us is immune to its temptations. It’s a given fact that power corrupts us. What most surprises me is our universal inability to recognise its dangers and respond appropriately as individuals and communities.

Mike Joslin

Garfield Avenue

Dorchester