SIR - Your story about the Social Market Foundation thinktank’s beliefs and how these will mean people will start paying for their own healthcare (T&A, April 9) is the latest symptom of a long-term disease that is killing the NHS – 25 years of “marketising” legislation, founded on the belief (like this one) that market ideology must be applied to the NHS despite evidence that doing so actually costs more, which has caused immense damage and threatens even more. Because the NHS is being dismantled, brick by brick, as budgets are cut in real terms, year on year.
The Secretary of State’s responsibility for the NHS was abrogated with the Health and Social Care Act (2012), and since then there has been a steady trot towards privatisation.
The NHS (Reinstatement) Bill – laid before Parliament last month – does just that. It restores the NHS and protects it from attempts to carve it apart. But to become law it needs MPs to know they can’t ignore it.
Alan Taman, Campaign for the NHS (Reinstatement) Bill 2015
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