Health Minister Andrew Lansley’s White Paper on the health service talks of “efficiency gains, with savings reinvested in frontline services”.

But Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust proposes cuts in frontline mental health services.

A recent editorial in The Lancet medical journal (July 16) said: “As the Oxfordshire plan acknowledges, the demand for mental health care is increasing, not decreasing... greater pressure on in-patient wards and increased severity of mental ill-health.

“There is a correspondingly greater need for clinical leadership. The proposed cuts in frontline services and consultant psychiatrists are unlikely to meet these greater demands, and the authors (of the report outing the cuts) clearly set out their concerns about what they are being asked to do.”

As a recent press statement from the Unite union (July 14) said: ‘‘In-patient services are cut to the bone. The only place they can target now is community services, but this would be a disaster.

“Our members work at keeping people out of hospital, and helping them to stay well. Cutting services will damage patient care and people will fall through the net.”

Oxfordshire delivers a lot of its ‘care in the community’ through contracts with the voluntary sector. Their budgets too are also badly threatened.

Some patients fear for their future welfare.

I think we should all be asking Mr Lansley to tell us the truth about NHS cuts, because the reality seems very different from his promise.

Bill MacKeith

Assistant Secretary

Oxford Trades Union Council

Great Clarendon Street

Oxford