IN the face of strong opposition to health service reforms that will do away with the Community Health Council patients' watchdogs and spread their functions around a clutch of different bodies, the government has insisted that patients' rights will not suffer.

But if that has already been in doubt as a whole raft of concerned organisations -- ranging from the British Medical Association and the Law Society to trade unions and local authorities -- have expressed fear that the last truly-independent body within the NHS will disappear with the scrapping of the CHCs, the misgivings will now surely multiply as the abysmal funding for a key part of the new set-up is revealed.

For it is disclosed today that the resources for new Patient Advocacy and Liaison Service that must be set up by each NHS Trust will amount to the equivalent of a bar of Milky Way for each person in East Lancashire.

If this comparison, drawn up by Nigel Robinson, secretary of the out-going Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley CHC, aims metaphorically to show how lightweight the new system will be, then NHS-users need to be worried not only about the new patients' rights services being linked to the care providers they are supposed to supervise, but also about them being seriously restrained in their funding.

For if each of East Lancashire's two hospital trusts and three primary-care trusts is to fulfil its requirements of setting up a new PALS body on its premises and providing it with professional staff, just how capable and effective will each be when Department of Health funding amounts to just £16,000 for each one?

This is only enough, says Mr Robinson, to pay for one junior employee and a desk and chair. It appears health trusts will have to use money meant for health care if a proper patients' rights service is to be provided.

Should they have to do that? Can they afford to? And would they have the incentive and commitment to do so?

It is a worrying mess. And one that prompts the suspicion that the government is not only stifling the independent airing and investigation of patients' complaints, but is bent on starving the new system at the very start.