THE Shadow Health Secretary John Healey has delivered a hard-hitting attack on the coalition Govenrnment’s plans for the NHS during a visit to the North-East.

Mr Healey, speaking exclusively to The Northern Echo, said that, as more and more people realised how radical and wide-ranging the Govenment’s NHS reforms were, there was growing fear for the future of the NHS.

After speaking to senior doctors and managers at The James Cook University Hospital, in Middlesbrough, on Friday, he said it was clear they feared for the long-term future of their hospital.

Mr Healey said: “Their worry is that when you have full-blown competition in the health service, you will have private health providers cherry- picking easier-to-treat patients and simpler surgical procedures and that will make it more difficult for a hospital like James Cook, which treats some of the most seriously ill, most complex cases, to survive.”

Mr Healey said the Health Bill introduced “an uncontrolled market risk” into the NHS.

He said: “What is extraordinary is that they didn’t tell people before the election about their plans. In fact, they promised not to do this.”

He said doctors were telling him that “this could be the end of the NHS as we know it. Slowly, people are beginning to wake up to how fundamental this could be”.

The Shadow Health Secretary warned that the Government’s plan to take away universal national waiting time targets would produce “a patchwork of services and standards across the country”.

Mr Healey said he saw what was happening as Prime Minister David Cameron’s “biggest broken promise”.

“He is breaking his promise to increase funding next year and not to force a big reorganisation on the NHS. This is exactly what he is doing,” he said.