Sir – On the same day that Cathie Wood and Gill Thompson, the sisters of Mark Wood and David Clapson who starved to death after having their benefits slashed, gave their heart-rending stories to a public meeting in Witney, the coalition Government took the operation of the now profitable and effective East Coast rail service out of public hands and gave it to private companies for the next eight years.

Like a retreating army, Prime Minister and Witney MP David Cameron’s Tory government, aided and abetted by the Liberal Democrats, is following a pillage and burn, scorched earth policy.

They have increased privatisation of the NHS, they have irrevocably undermined the education system through cutting local education authority funding and promoting academies, and they have created a generation of youngsters with mountains of debt through the introduction of university fees, which will save the taxpayer virtually nothing compared to the previous system, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies.

They are taking everything of value and leaving destruction and, literally in the cases of Mark Wood and David Clapson among others, death in their wake.

What further havoc will they wreak on us before the General Election next May?

Paul Creighton, West End, Witney