NHS is now in mortal danger.. we can save it

SOMETIMES a single idea can sum up a whole nation. For Britain, for all of us, it is the National Health Service.

The NHS, 70 next month, is compassion in action. It is care with a human face, solidarity writ large and sympathy woven into the fabric of this land.

Here, we’ve made a patriotic decision, supported by the overwhelming majority, to pool our resources and share the costs and miracles of health care.

All of us have experience of the NHS, of parents and grandparents cared for in their last days; of children saved because of the skills of midwives in childbirth; of men and women suffering previously inoperable and untreatable conditions now restored to fine health. And in my own case as a young man aged 16 – threatened with blindness because of an injury at rugby – whose sight was restored by the pioneering new techniques of a brilliant surgeon, Hector Chawla.

The NHS certainly saved me and has saved someone in almost every family I know. Now, I say it is time for all of us to come together and save the NHS.

Yes, it has its critics, but who would return to a world where nurses had to leave the beds of patients and run charity flag days to raise funds for lifesaving equipment?

Who would revert to a time where the strongest and most brave of men and women were in fear of going to the doctor, not because of their pain but because they could not afford

WARNING Gordon Brown