Letter: Held to ransom

The British Medical Association defends the high costs of GP holiday cover over Christmas and the New Year (your report, February 14) by saying that it amounted to only 6p per person to cover the whole population.

But of course the vast majority of us made no use of the out-of-hours service, so it's a thoroughly misleading figure.

In any case, there's a bigger issue: if the rest of the NHS was working over the period - hospitals remained open, as did their A&E departments - without charging us as if they were emergency plumbers, why should GPs be any different?

The honest answer is that their trade union held the last government to ransom. I would respect the BMA more if it admitted as much: after all, negotiating the best deal for its members is what it exists for.

ANDREW ANDERSON

Granton Road

Edinburgh