How do you treat your friends? As a cash cow, demanding certain financial guarantees? No. Probably not.

Yet in the coldhearted world of the NHS accountant that is exactly how the John Radcliffe Hospital’s League of Friends is seen – a revenue stream rather than a kindly collection of volunteers helping out the financially- strapped public health service.

Today, after much wrangling with a less than forthcoming Oxford University Hospitals Trust, we can reveal that despite original denials, it has told the League of Friends it must guarantee to hand over £25,000 a year in rent as donations for the space its cafe occupies.

The League of Friends is unable to speak freely about this, but the Oxford Mail is. And this decision is a disgrace.

In the sterile corporate world there will be justification about securing value for money from the space the cafe occupies.

But the League of Friends is not a commercial enterprise. It is a group of volunteers who help the hospital. They do not deserve to be put into a financial armlock by beancounters.

It sends a message that only their money rather than their efforts is valued. That attitude could ultimately see the league wither and die.