SO Mr Chaytor, the current Member of Parliament for Bury North, thinks that those members of his electorate who joined the campaign to save services at Fairfield hospital are the rent-a-gob' tendency does he (Letter, October 26)?

I'm sure those thousands of people will now have their own opinion of him! Mr Chaytor states that the public must be fully involved in the process of change yet they are given little or no opportunity to do so in any meaningful way.

The Strategic Health Authority produces consultation' documents which require a Phd in gobbledegook to interpret, so is it any wonder that the concerned citizens he labels political opportunists, professional hypocrites and assorted bandwagon jumpers use any method open to them to protest at the cynical way that they and the Pennine Acute Trust managers choose to curtail and close services without proper public consultation?

Finally, to answer Mr Chaytor's question: "Did the Tories budget for the £25million to rebuild Fairfield?"

The answer is YES. As a non-executive director, I was one of the delegation who visited Stephen Dorrell MP, then Secretary of State for Health, in the spring of 1997 when the budget was agreed.

VERA STRINGER CBE Former non-executive and acting chairman of Bury NHS Trust and member of the Babies First Campaign