The threat to the NHS

• THROUGHOUT the current debate on the health service’s future, the Conservatives have praised it as an abstract concept, pledging to uphold an NHS that is free at the point of use and available to everyone based on need, not the ability to pay.

But it’s possible to praise something even as you legislate it out of existence. Changes don’t need to be advertised as embodying a cumulative destructive purpose for that purpose to be achieved.

It may be that the current union stance may serve to bring about the very thing, a privatised health system, that we dread.

Let’s by all means support the nursing staff at The Royal Free and UCH. They deserve a decent award for doing a very difficult job.

May their negotiators be aware that there will be a moment when they have to change gear and go for the best compromise.

CHRISTOPHER MASON, NW1