I READ with horror Lord Winston’s suggestion that people should pay up to £200 for a doctors appointment. Is this rich bloke aware that a lot pensioners and working poor are lucky if their weekly income is this? Get real. Old age pension is less than this, we paid contributions called National Insurance, most of us in excess of 50 years for this. A far more sensible suggestion would be to charge people for missing appointments and clamp down on health tourists. Do as they do in Europe, get credit-card details before treating them and get rid of all the useless quangos, put power back in the hands of doctors and nurses and stop American hedge funds and drug companies taking over the NHS by stealth. Return it to founding principles, treat the sick not boob jobs and gastric bands for fatties.

A Poyser, Stockton Road, Newport