SOMEONE once said: "There are lies, damn lies and statistics."

Mr James Daly's statistics (Readers Letters, January 21) had be scratching my head: where are these newly appointed doctors and nurses?

They can't be working in GP surgeries because they are certainly not offering timely appointments. They cannot be working in hospitals, as there appear to be no hospital beds for their patients. Perhaps they are replacements for the doctors and nurses who have emigrated or retired due to burn-out in the under-funded NHS?

I would like to offer a few statistics:

*Cost improvement savings made by the Royal Bolton Hospital BHS Foundation Trust over five years: £73m.

*Number of beds cut at Royal Bolton to meet cost-improvement cuts over same period: 253.

*Number of hospital beds per 1,000 population in Europe: Germany 8.2, France 6.6, EU average 4.9, UK 3.3, England 2.7.

*Amount the CCG plans to cut from hospital-based healthcare in April 2015: £11.7m.

The biggest healthcare shake-up takes place in Bolton in April; for some target groups their healthcare will move out of hospital into the community. Some elderly people will no longer have consultant-led healthcare. It is not clear whether the person leading their healthcare will have the same skill, expertise and knowledge as their consultant — so little has been explained. We have no idea what is happening in April. Mr Daly perhaps needs to give us more facts and figures?

C Howarth,

Member of Bolton and District Pensioners' Association