Your editorial (23 April) is too kind to David Cameron. It is Downing Street spin you have fallen for, that he “neglected to read Andrew Lansley’s wild NHS overhaul until emergency surgery became necessary”. The Institute for Government and King’s Fund report by Nicholas Timmins, Never Again?, makes it abundantly clear that Cameron was deeply involved at every stage as opposition leader in developing that policy, deliberately hid the policy from the electorate and, in private to Conservative MPs, still denies as prime minister that there has been any substantive change made by parliament and it is all about presentation.
That is why Labour and the SNP, together with the Green party, Plaid Cymru and any willing Lib Dem MP must reinstate a recognisable NHS operating throughout the UK by replacing the Health and Social Care Act 2012 with the cross-party National Health Service bill 2015.
David Owen
House of Lords
• Just as Labour claims that its present policies will secure the NHS from further privatisation appear ill-founded under EU competition rules, so it seems are its claims that it will be able to secure exemption from the EU/US Transatlatic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) treaty currently being negotiated amid great secrecy. TTIP poses additional serious threats to the NHS from international corporate predators, who will be enabled by it to strong-arm their way into NHS budgets. It will also make renationalisation of any former NHS assets and services impossible under its terms.
The National Health Service bill 2015’s policies for demarketising the NHS would protect it both from existing EU and Gatt rules and from future international trade agreements such as TTIP. We should press trade unions and election candidates to back the bill as a matter of urgency.
John Furse
London
