June 28 I am involved in the campaign against Tory Minister Andrew Lansley’s Health and Social Care Bill, specifically in relation to the removal of the Secretary of State for Health's legal 'duty to provide' a comprehensive health service. Our objective is to stop the bill.

It has widely been reported by the press that there has been a U-turn by the government in relation to this legislation. This is not true. This misreporting has been largely down to poor, lazy journalism and very clever spin by the government. The wording of all NHS Acts from 1946-2006 contained clear and unambiguous clauses requiring the Secretary of Health to provide comprehensive services, free at the point of access, to all residents of the UK. The new bill with amendments does not and is so ambiguous as to make this very unclear. The likely consequences will be that we face an 'Americanisation' of health services which will begin charging for some procedures, these charges will steadily spread and increase just as in social care and older people services. In addition we will all be required to get our own private health insurance to cover the growing costs-this is already being floated by a Tory think tank.

Thursday's meeting of the Public Bill Committee will be scrutinising the new amendments and may be important in terms of retaining the duty to provide and some key decisions may be taken. It would be useful if you and as many people as possible could email the committee and to ask for no change to the wording of the relevant parts of the 2006 NHS Act, this needs to happen by close of Wednesday. I have contained a standard wording which can be downloaded here but feel free to put this in any form you wish, more variation the better. Please send to scrutiny@parliament.uk and if possible forward to anyone else you think may support this campaign.

If you want to find out more about our campaign and the background including a legal opinion on the above please visit www.dutytoprovide.net

Many thanks

Eamann Devlin