Sir, I fear that we are sleepwalking towards the destruction of the NHS at an accelerating pace. Your report (June 30) that the Government is quietly trying to hand over effective control of the primary care trusts (PCTs) to international private health companies without discussion or parliamentary debate is chilling. Since PCTs control most of the NHS budget and commission care, the fate of every hospital in the country will pass into the hands of overseas private companies.

As we know from bitter experience with the national railway system, the London Underground and the water companies, the primary concern of large international conglomerates is maximising profit, not the welfare of UK taxpayers. The Department of Health’s comment that there had been misleading “drafting errors” in the notice in the European Journal is preposterous. What is proposed represents the biggest change in the running of the NHS since 1948. Every sentence of the notice will have been scrutinised meticulously. It is inconceivable that its content would not have been known in detail by Patricia Hewitt, Lord Warner and Tony Blair.

Prime Ministers are at their most dangerous when they know their political lives are coming to a close, as John Major’s scorched-earth privatisation of the railways shows. Tony Blair is adamant that no one should be able to reverse his market-based NHS reforms and handing over healthcare commissioning to overseas health companies would achieve just that.

A Conservative government will not save the NHS, since the Tories introduced the market concept in the first place. Tony Blair has simply accelerated the changes and gone where his predecessors did not dare. I fear that the only hope lies with backbench Labour MPs, who may yet have the integrity and courage to stand up for the interests of their constituents. By the time the devastating effects of handing over control of healthcare commissioning to private companies becomes evident to the general public, it will be far too late to reverse the process.

DR STEVEN WHITE
Barnet, Herts

Sir, The NHS has many virtues and many flaws. No one can doubt that the flaws need repairing (“Medical profession will see move as a kick in the teeth”, June 30). Sadly, Patricia Hewitt’s privatisation remedies simply swap one set of flaws for another. This leads to a disastrous amplification of NHS defects and deficits, and to a squeeze on the productive and successful parts of the NHS.

Simple, cheap investments, for example in improving existing GP premises are spurned. However, billions of extra pounds go into expensive facilities such as walk-in centres, independent sector treatment centres, computer projects and management consultants.

As a doctor and as a taxpayer I look on appalled as success is diminished and failed management structures become ever more complex, expensive and less effective. At present the Department of Health is the biggest threat to the future functioning of the NHS. Closing the department down would actually improve the functioning of the NHS.

DR PETER DAVIES
Halifax

Sir, The latest crisis to hit the NHS reforms is indicative of the power struggle between those who believe that the NHS monopoly is the best way forward, mainly the trade unions, and those who believe that reform of the monopoly NHS has to take place if our healthcare is ever to be as good as other European countries.

Unfortunately, the Government does not dare to give outside organisations who do a good job in other countries contracts, which will enable them to show how better quality healthcare can be provided. Unless the Government can give outside organisations the freedom to function as they do elsewhere, they will be constrained by the interference of politicians, the national arrangements for pay and conditions of work, NHS financial rules and all the other bureaucratic structures that exist in NHS healthcare.

The NHS monopoly desperately needs reform but it will need more political courage than the present Government can provide.

ROGER FOX
Down Hatherley, Glos

Explore Letters

• Feedback