English hospitals are shedding services while Wales can offer cheap prescriptions and Scotland free care for the elderly because of the out-dated Barnett formula.

This formula, created at the end of the 1970s, awards a greater proportion of public funds per head of population to Scotland and Wales than to England.Eighty per cent of the UK's wealth comes from England, allowing the devolved bodies now set up in those countries to provide generous benefits to their populations.

The Barnett formula has allowed the Scottish Parliament to introduce free long-term care for the elderly and abolish university top-up and tuition fees.

The Welsh Assembly froze prescription charges two years ago and has done away with them to those under 25. It also intends to scrap all prescription charges as soon as possible.

The Barnett formula was intended to be short-term only, but 20 or so years later, it's still going.

Its creator, Joel Barnett, has called for it to be replaced, but the main political parties, worried about handing a coup to Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties, lack the political will to reform it.

There is now a party that has the people of England's best interests at heart.

The English Democratic Party is a growing force in the world of politics and if you do not receive a leaflet through your door soon, then please look it up on the web. It is also looking for volunteers to help with fundraising and spreading the word.

Until we, in England, get either a political party capable of shaking the complacency of the main parties, or an English parliament, answerable to the English electorate, to call for a fairer allocation of funding, we will be expected to just sit by and do nothing.

Kevin Hunter, Old Mill Court, Grimsby.