Letter: Treasury's generosity should be extended

Sir: Your front-page report 'Treasury scrubbed Brandreth debt' (12 January) provided most discouraging reading. The cancellation of about pounds 200,000 debt of taxpayers' money - incurred by an MP and 'two of Britain's richest men' - is a generous gesture indeed by the Treasury.

I only wish that a similar generosity could be shown towards projects such as our Cathedral Breakfast and Archer Scheme, which attempts to provide a basic meal and access to simple recreational and educational facilities for many of Sheffield's poorest people. The sum of pounds 200,000 can be wiped clean off a corporate slate; we worry how to raise the extra pounds 8,500 we need to keep our work going.

I suspect that my sense of frustration will be echoed by many others in the voluntary sector, who are working to provide the 'basics' of decency and dignity for some of the most deprived groups in our society.

Yours faithfully,

CHRISTOPHER M. SMITH

The Cathedral Church of

St Peter & St Paul

Sheffield

12 January

The writer is chairman of the Sheffield Cathedral Breakfast Project.