EDITED VERSION OF MY LETTER TO THE BMA.

The purpose of this letter is to urge you to advise your members to play no further part in deciding if patients are entitled or not to 'free continuing care'. ..........

The enclosed letters to Bevan Brittan and the Law Society are self explanatory, but you should know of the immense damage that is being done to the reputation of Doctors and in particular of Consultants because they have been instructed by the Strategic Health Authorities to take unlawful decisions to deprive the old, the ill and the infirm, many of them war veterans, of all their assets.

Every such decision is at law a major quasi-judicial decision under Article 6 of the Human Rights Act and Doctors are not qualified to take them. The requirement that they should is putting the Medical Profession in an impossible position.

There have, alas, been some examples of Consultants behaving disgracefully .......

I am sure you will agree that when a patient is in a hospital bed, the consultant whose name is posted above it is morally and legally responsible, even if he does not know of the chicanery and duplicity of Social Workers and Community Care Nurses.

........As I say in my letter to the Law Society, there is a growing belief that nobody can ever be trusted, not even Doctors.

.......... You can prevent it continuing by instructing your members not to participate in this unlawful farce any more. It is a farce presided over by a Secretary of State rejected by 64.8% of the electorate.

Derek J.Cole.