SIR – Unlike my friend and fellow-churchgoer, Emmerson Walgrove, I was a wartime recipient of free orange juice and school milk. I didn’t like milk, so gave my one-third of a pint bottle away.

Perhaps as a consequence, in 1944, I contracted osteo-myelitis, a deficiency disease which attacks the bone marrow.

After the war, this disease almost died out, only to return (along with tuberculosis) in the post-Thatcher era.

It may well be, as Emmerson says, that schoolchildren no longer needed free milk, but I believe prevention is better than seeking a cure after the event.

As someone who works so tirelessly for the disabled, surely he must agree with me, at least on that.

Karl Dallas, Church Green, Bradford