I attended the event at Bolton Town Hall which attracted two letters from Alan Johnson of the Bolton Green Party.

Participants prepared to turn up before 10am on a Saturday and stay until 4pm were paid £30 and given a sandwich lunch.

The session, attended by nearly 140 people, was an interesting experience. I was there because I have given my email address after attending local council forums.

Maybe I am wrong, but I believe folk who are not on email (many of whom need NHS services) were not part of this democratic exercise aimed at identifying future needs.

There was much to admire about the professionalism of the Bolton Clinical Commissioning Group (local doctors) which used a big screen, voting keypads and staff working as facilitators to record the people’s views.

But I was left feeling the organisers had been rewarded with acceptance of their view that none of us should go to hospital unless we are seriously ill, that it is better to look after vulnerable people at home and we should accept a system that would lead to specialist hospitals away from Bolton.

Maybe that is the way forward and increased financial support is not necessary — I am not qualified to say one way or the other. All I know is that big change is coming. It was a useful exercise in communicating local views — many of them critical of current thinking — but Alan Johnson has a valid point when he queries the need to give all the participants £30 at a time when the NHS is strapped for cash.

As I queued up for my envelope of cash, I saw that some attendees were leaving without going for their cash. Good for them. My £30 was given to Bolton Hospice.

The “free lunch” issue is irrelevant because there was nothing exotic about the sandwiches, but it is worth wondering if it was necessary to pay £30 out of public funds to people who would have been happy to give their views for nothing.

Alan Calvert Harwood