Letters

Your headline, 'Langlands blames Nichol for Read codes fiasco' (News, page 3, 26 March) is at best misleading.

As your report said, I accepted in the public accounts committee hearing that the management arrangements for the NHS centre for coding and classification were flawed between 1990 and 1996.

The position has now been put right.

Towards the end of the hearing, and in answer to a very specific question from the chair, Alan Williams MP, I confirmed that Duncan Nichol was the NHS chief executive in 1990.

Duncan Nichol was the architect of the corporate governance arrangements introduced in 1994, and I have sought to build on these foundations. I have never ducked my responsibilities as accounting officer.

Alan Langlands, Chief executive, NHS Executive, Leeds.