Boris has won no favours with his staged visit

The Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and three of our local MPs made a visit to Maidstone Hospital this week.

We would have welcomed an invitation to meet them there, to ask them - the Prime Minister in particular - the questions that we know you, the public, would have wanted us to ask.

Sadly we were not invited and we were not even informed of the visit till it was all over.

Nor were any other local media. We had to rely on morsels released by the Prime Minister’s office later.

Even the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust’s communication office was unable to give us any details or photos until they had first had the copy approved by No10.

This kind of information management is not the way of a fair and open society.

The media play an important part in any democracy in holding our politicians to account.

Sadly this was a blatant exercise by No10 in controlling the message, and not for the first time either.

We can understand that the Prime Minister wouldn’t want to release details of his visit to the wider public in advance - lest he be faced with braying crowds demanding his resignation on arrival.

There are similar concerns when The Queen or a member of the Royal Family makes a visit. For security reasons we are obliged to refrain from publishing details of their visits in advance, but at least the Royals have the courtesy to ask us along on the day.

It’s a great shame because it means we also missed the opportunity of photographing and reporting first-hand on the wonderful work being done by our NHS staff in Maidstone.