NHS reforms will cause ‘irreparable harm’

The bill will fragment patient care, erode medical ethics and trust, widen health inequalities and waste money, wrote the doctors.

Its authors added that while the government claims the reforms are backed by health professionals and the public, this is not the case.

“It is our professional judgement that the health and social care bill will erode the NHS’s ethical and co-operative foundations and that it will not deliver efficiency, quality, fairness or choice,” they wrote.

The coalition’s controversial bill has already faced opposition and the proposals were postponed before ministers eventually made some concessions.

The letter comes ahead of the House of Lords debate on the bill next week, and was made public on the day that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley gives his speech to the Conservative Party conference.

Its signatories come from a range of health professions, including over 40 directors of public health and more than 100 leading public health academics.

Professor Martin McKee from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a signatory of the open letter, said that the letter showed the widespread opinion among the public health community, that the bill will be “bad for the NHS”.