SIR, - In your Editor's Comment (Herts Advertiser, January 19), you said that the health trusts in Herts and Beds were heading for a £100-million deficit. This raises the question: Whom do they owe money to? Since suppliers and staff are still being paid,

SIR, - In your Editor's Comment (Herts Advertiser, January 19), you said that the health trusts in Herts and Beds were heading for a £100-million deficit. This raises the question: Whom do they owe money to? Since suppliers and staff are still being paid, then the "debt" is simply the difference between the real cost of running the hospitals and the amount of money that the Department of Health had budgeted. Perhaps instead of cutting staff and cutting the pay of catering staff, the Department should have sacked those responsible for drawing up the budgets. It is also an interesting point that in the national budget, billions of pounds more are spent than are collected in taxes. Nobody calls this gap in finances a debt. IOUs - or Treasury bonds - are issued by the Government and banks and insurance companies are forced to buy them. R.E. DURRANT, Park Avenue, St Albans.