Mr Wymer makes some interesting comments about Edgware General Hospital in last week's edition of the Borehamwood & Elstree Times' letters page.

However, I am afraid his memory has been playing tricks on him. Never, at any time, did the last Conservative Government threaten to close down Edgware General in its entirety.

Ministers made this crystal clear in a Commons debate in May 1995, two years before the last General Election.

The plan always was to close Accident and Emergency and turn the rest of Edgware General into a community hospital. Ministers made that clear in the same debate. Was it all a rotten idea? Well, the presentLabour Government has followed the Tory plan to the letter, so it must have had something to recommend it.

Certainly Mr Wymer seems jolly pleased with the community hospital.

Labour sought to make political capital on the plan's extreme unpopularity by implying that a Labour vote was a vote to reopen Edgware's A&E.

Labour ministers have been challenged in Parliament to deny that they deliberately sought to deceive the public. Labour's silence is deafening.

I am saddened, but not surprised, to hear that the membership of the League of Friends of Edgware Hospital has dwindled in recent years. This is, after all, what happens when honest people find they have been taken for a ride by unscrupulous politicians.

David McKee,

Borehamwood Conservatives.