THE Government is always telling us we must recycle more, and few of us would argue with that.

But it seems they are taking their own advice a little too seriously after a letter from Droitwich woman Ann Hodgson to Tony Blair was found in a recycling skip in Oxford.

Mrs Hodgson had written to the Prime Minister expressing her anger after a gynaecological operation for which she had been waiting a year was abruptly cancelled.

Her letter contained intimate medical details that most of us would be less than happy telling all and sundry about - yet it was left lying where anyone could read it.

And someone did, because that letter, along with a bundle of others written to Mr Blair and Health Secretary John Reid over the past two months, was discovered and handed to the Guardian newspaper by a public-spirited soul.

As Mrs Hodgson points out in our front-page story today, the document should have been shredded.

But the incident is more than an example of a cavalier approach to medical confidentiality rules, though that is bad enough.

It also shows that the powers-that-be perhaps don't take our concerns about the failings of our health service as seriously as they should.

A 2,000-name petition protesting about the closure of a Cheltenham children's ward was also found with Mrs Hodgson's letter.

What notice did the Prime Minister's men take of that?

They threw it away.