IT WILL come as no surprise to the people in this part of East Lancashire that the hospital trust has used the wife of a trust director in a DVD made in an attempt to drum up support for their discredited reorganisation plans (LET, May 20).

This is the same trust that I believe deceived the people of Burnley and Pendle with its commitment to maintain existing services at Burnley General Hospital when the two East Lancashire trusts amalgamated several years ago.

I also note with interest that several of the area's senior clinicians and health service representatives have apparently pledged their support to the planned changes in service provision.

It will be interesting to see if those same people are as eager to support the changes when patients start to die on the way to Queen's Park Hospital.

Or will there be a sudden outbreak of contagious amnesia' and/or buck-passing, sadly not much consolation for the relatives.

Will they also be prepared to justify their support for the changes should those relatives be prepared to take matters to a higher level.

Surely the time has come for our elected representative to take this issue up with the Department of Health and, at the very least, demand a public inquiry and real public consultation into these plans.

They are plans that nobody in East Lancashire wants and that are purely driven by a desire to improve the trust's finances, not to improve the health facilities of the people of this area.

ALAN THORBURN, Thirlmere Road, Burnley.