Healthcare inequality; Your say.

IN the 1930s, Stockton's pioneering officer for medical health George McGonigle established the links between unemployment, poverty and ill-health. Eighty years on, when people in the poorer parts of this borough still die nearly ten years earlier than their better-off fellow residents, his findings remain relevant.

Poverty and disadvantage are killers as much as smoking and unsafe drinking.

So it is surely a backward step for the Government to propose that deprivation should be discounted when allocating NHS funds and the age of the population becomes instead the deciding factor for how much is spent on services? It has been calculated that this move would cut funding in the North-east by nearly 15% or pounds 265 per head as money is transferred from areas like Teesside to comfortably-off "retirement towns" on the south coast and in the Home Counties.

Many older people on Teesside need - and deserve - extra support because of the hard manual work they have done in industries that created wealth for the whole nation.

It is up to us all to make sure they are not short-changed at their time of greatest need by this government.

COUNCILLOR MICHAEL CLARK, Labour councillor for Grangefield, Stockton Council