Glenda Jackson, the Member of Parliament for Hampstead and Kilburn, has expressed her total opposition to the Government’s Health and Social Care Bill which she exposed as a “flimsy disguise to privatise the NHS”. Ms Jackson aired her view at a meeting held in West Hampstead Library on 10th March about the future of the NHS in light of the Government’s proposed reforms. The meeting was attended by Dr Jane Roberts, the previous leader of Camden Council and a child and adolescent psychiatrist, Dr Neil Goulbourne, a GP and Vice-Chair of the Socialist Health Association, and Dr Marion Newman, a GP at the West Hampstead Medical Centre.

Glenda Jackson went on to explain that the Health Bill being put forward by the coalition introduces “an unacceptable level of competition which will destroy the essential glory of the NHS which is that it can provide treatment delivered dependent on need and not the ability of the patient to pay”.

There has been widespread criticism of David Cameron’s plans not only from the Labour opposition but also from the British Medical Association who held an extraordinary general meeting on 15th March, the first such meeting for 20 years. A further blow was dealt to Mr Cameron’s plans when the Lib Dems passed a motion on 12th March attacking the Government’s plans.

The so-called NHS ‘modernisation’ is ill-informed, badly constructed and poorly thought-through yet the Government is stubbornly pushing forward ignoring the warnings from many groups and professional bodies. Furthermore, the statistics that Mr Cameron is using to justify the need to restructure the NHS are being misrepresented out of context and claims that Britain has higher cancer rates and a poorer record for heart disease than France are simply not true.

And finally, the Tories are, again, breaking their pre-election promise that they wouldn’t waste money on any more ‘top down restructuring plans’:

“With the Conservatives there will be no more of the tiresome, meddlesome, top-down re-structures that have dominated the last decade of the NHS.” David Cameron, speech at the Royal College of Pathologists, 2 November 2009.

Just weeks after the coalition formed the leadership announced  "We will stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care." The Coalition: our programme for government, 20 May 2010, p. 24

Glenda Jackson is calling on the government to re-think their Health Bill before they destroy the NHS that this country is so proud of.