It was ironic that Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, should urge his party, at its recent annual conference, to stick with the coalition Government on the same day the King’s Fund issued a report showing that almost half the wards in our hospitals have dangerous staffing levels – where there are more than eight patients for every nurse on duty.

This comes as no surprise at a time when the Government is cutting the budgets of NHS Trusts by up to 6% a year.

Nick Clegg must think if you keep repeating the mantra that the NHS budget is “ring-fenced” or “protected” then people will eventually believe it.

NHS Trusts and their commissioners in the shape of Clinical Commissioning Groups are already struggling to see where these savings can be made.

God only knows what will happen next year when they are being forced to make a further 6% in savings. Lib Dems cannot avoid their collective responsibility in this.

They are part of the Government and allowed the Health and Social Care Bill to pass though Parliament, thereby paving the way for more privatisation and the fragmentation of the NHS.

One further irony was a local Lib Dem recently calling on people to rally around the Lib Dem flag and “kick-start” the party’s fortunes.

Presumably a good foundation for this was the 56 – yes, 56 – votes its candidate secured in July’s local byelection in the Hanover and Elm Grove ward of Brighton, compared with Emma Daniel’s 1,396 votes for Labour...

There are, though, good people among the Lib Dems both locally and nationally. There just aren’t enough of them to pull those at the top away from the greasy pole of power.

Peter Atkinson, Wolseley Road, Portslade