WHO would you rather trust with your health?

Your family doctor, who knows you and has seen your suffering at first hand - or an anonymous panel to whom you are little more than a statistic?

We know which we would prefer.

That is why, today, we launch a campaign urging health bureaucrats to scrap their unreasonable plans to vet GP referrals.

Let Your Doctor Decide has already won widespread backing from local GPs. As Dr John Givans, secretary of the North Yorkshire Local Medical Committee, puts it: "A patient's GP knows exactly what your clinical needs are - not some person in an office somewhere who's looking at bits of paper."

Nobody is denying the size of the debt local health bosses are facing after millions of pounds were overspent. The North Yorkshire primary care trust's financial problems are the worst in the country, amounting to a debt estimated at £45 million.

We have been critical of many of the trust's proposals for reducing the debt. Suspending hospital procedures such as epidurals for back pain, wisdom tooth extraction and surgery for varicose veins seems callous and unworthy of an organisation that should be dedicated to relieving suffering.

Cancelling the removal of non-malignant skin lesions was even worse. How can anyone be certain a lesion is non-malignant until it has been removed?

It would have been easy, in the circumstances, for us to call today on the Government to write off the whole of the primary care trust's £45 million debt.

That would have allowed local health bosses to start with a clean slate. It would have allowed many of the recent cutbacks to be reversed.

We are not making that call, however. We recognise that, with health trusts across the country struggling under huge debts of their own, it would not be realistic.

It was the primary care trust that got itself into this debt. It is the primary care trust that must get itself out of it.

But we think it should find a better way of doing so than tying GPs hands and restricting their ability to refer patients for treatment they believe they need.

After all, if you can't trust your GP to make the right decision about your health care, who can you trust?