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Offenders' bibs not such a bright idea

You recently reported that offenders serving community sentences might be forced to wear high-visibility bibs (Top stories, June 24). In terms of winning the fight against crime, I'm afraid that fluorescent jackets just won't do.

Central to criminal justice is reducing the number of victims. Communities and criminal justice bodies, working together, hold the solution to this problem. If you asked anyone if he or she would like to be a victim of crime, I am sure we know what the answer would be.

Is patient data being abused?

Evidence suggests that NHS trusts around the country are letting staff off the hook for breaking data privacy rules

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Members of the public want to know that local services have a grip on these issues. They also want to know that work is going on to address and reduce the risk of citizens becoming a victim of crime. The best solutions exist where joint work uses the controls available to criminal justice bodies and the resources available to local authorities and their partners.

Helen Cash, Maidstone

A formula to end waste

Karol Sikora rightly says that “value can be equated to access plus quality divided by cost” (Over to you, June 24). In value management circles this is known as the value equation - first set down in the 1940s by the inventor of value analysis, Lawrence Miles, of the US General Electric Company, as “value equals function over cost”.

This equation and its variants remains central to modern value management practice that, if adopted by the NHS, would remove much of the waste that Professor Sikora complains about.

Clive Bone, Bideford, Devon

Freedom for cancer patients

It is cruel and ridiculous that cancer patients are unable to top up their treatment with privately funded care (Top stories June 24). There are new drugs available that could give cancer patients a longer and better quality of life and, ultimately, we would like all patients to receive free treatment. However, this will all take time to put into place and might be too late for some. In the meantime we must give sufferers hope by allowing them freedom of choice.

Lesley Advani, Ponteland, Newcastle Upon Tyne

The arithmetic of poverty

Hilary Fisher, the director of End Child Poverty, appears to forget that the way poverty is calculated in the UK is seemingly designed to ensure that the poor will always be officially with us (Over to you, June 24).

Defining poverty as having an income of less than 60 per cent of the national average means that when wages rise sharply, a person can see their own income go up by more than the rate of inflation yet still remain in poverty. Thus official totals must be treated with extreme caution.

Tim Mickleburgh, Grimsby, Lincs

Best way to judge GPs

GPs do have concerns about patients being able to rate their practice on the NHS Choices website (How many nurses in a ward? June 24).

Patients need and deserve to be informed of the range and quality of services offered by their GP practice, as well as how it compares with other surgeries. But letting patients post comments in a way that resembles a restaurant review site is too simplistic. It is un-likely to be representative, and would allow anecdotal comments to be selectively posted by those motivated to do so, and therefore would not be an appropriate basis for judging a practice. And there are legal considerations: if a patient posts something libellous, defamatory or if a serious allegation is made. How is the reader, without any knowledge of the background, supposed to make a fair judgment?

We'd like NHS Choices to provide patients with factual, accurate information regarding GP practices, and to draw upon established data such as the practice's performance scores from the quality and outcomes framework and the results of their annual patient experience survey, which shows patient satisfaction with opening hours and access. This would be of greater benefit to patients than the selective views a website comment system would encourage.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, negotiator, British Medical Association GP Committee

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