I READ with interest the Rev Bill Ferguson's letter, The cost of funerals (May 5), having recently settled my late father's affairs.

I am appalled at the cynical level at which the previous Government of supposedly caring Conservatives set the level at which those requiring long-term residential nursing care qualified for full State payment of nursing-home fees. The sum of #3000 left to a patient by the State would, at the time at which the level was set, be sufficient to cover the cost of a simple funeral plus the necessary legal fees incurred in winding up the patient's estate on death.

The current levels at which State help with nursing home fees is given, though marginally better, have not been increased to take account of inflation. It must be noted that the Labour Government has not introduced interim measures to raise these levels prior to the Royal Commission on the Long-term Care for the Elderly completing its work, and is therefore allowing the situation of those in care to deteriorate.

I am surprised that in a survey carried out for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (May 5) only half of the children of those care-home residents surveyed who had ''effectively been disinherited'' were angry. Perhaps they were less affluent than the rest who had ''accepted the inevitable''?

How can those less well-off carers, who have been ''effectively disinherited'' and who are likely to have been contributing to the cost of their loved ones' care themselves, provide for their own old age? How many will become homeless and destitute before something is done? Will carers who have been ''effectively disinherited'' be compensated?

Margaret M H Lyth,

26 Gardenside Street,

Uddingston.

May 5.