ANDY Burham is quite right to highlight the short fall Bolton Council will have to deal with in social care funding of almost £250,000, and with the proposed integration of Health and Social care, I feel readers need to be made aware of the bigger picture.

In November 2014 when Devolution Greater Manchester was signed by all 10 local authority leaders in the presence of George Osborne, Cllr Cliff Morris signed it on behalf of Bolton without fully consulting the people of Bolton.

Months later he express concerns that he hoped that it was not another way the Tory government could inflict cuts, from what we now know it appears this was the case, out of Devo Manc came a budget of £6 billion for NHS Trusts to be spread across Greater Manchester, in hindsight it now appears to be cuts by the back door.

With the deal comes the locality plan which in Bolton's case requires savings of £166 million and the possible closing of five wards at Royal Bolton Hospital over the next five years. In a nutshell our local NHS will be grossly underfunded, so much for the Tory government saying it will increase spending year on year in our much treasured health service.

I recently attended a meeting of Bolton CCG, where it was disclosed that the locality plan had been approved, and now it was going out to consultation, seems a strange way to conduct business approving something then putting it out to public consultation afterwards.

Nye Bevan founder of our NHS said when asked how long would our NHS last he said it will last as long as there are folk left to fight for it.

In 2017 we must fight and defend our Health Service against cuts, and privatisation.

Alan Johnson

Bolton Green Party