Health experts yesterday launched an emergency operation to revive London's NHS from a service cuts and hospital closures "crisis."

London already lacks GPs, hospital beds and community care services and faces a further £4 billion shortfall, the Unite-backed People's Inquiry found.

But the panel pointed out desperately needed public cash is still being siphoned off by profiteers who built hospitals under the private finance initiative (PFI).

And they warned the Tories' health Act will open the NHS in England to another market-driven disaster.

The inquiry, chaired by NHS expert Roy Lilley, gave its verdict after gathering evidence from health workers, patients and managers.

Mr Lilley said the "fractured state" of London's NHS is the worst since he started work in 1974.

"We did feel there was a general chaos in the system," he told the launch of the inquiry's report in Parliament.

Mr Lilley added that he was "horrified" at how tough it is for ordinary Londoners to make their voices heard on NHS failures.

His warning comes a week after Tory Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt pushed clause 119 of the Care Bill through Parliament in retaliation for a crushing defeat by campaigners who blocked his bid to shut Lewisham hospital.

It gives special administrators the power to shut hospitals if a nearby NHS trust is short of money.

The inquiry's London's NHS at the Crossroads report recommends that the clause be scrapped.

It also calls for PFI debt to be taken off individual hospital budgets and absorbed by the Treasury and demands a cash injection to match the city's rising population.

Health researcher John Lister warned that "people will die" if services become tougher to access.

"If you're going to have a market in the NHS, money will be taken out of emergency services where a loss is made.

"Some of that will be from life-saving treatments."

Unite health officer Frank Wood added: "Where you commission bottom-dollar services then the health outcomes will be worse for people.

"It's not just about whether people will die, it's about how they will live."

The People's Inquiry gathered evidence from 95 individuals and groups at a series of public meetings held over the last seven months.

Professor Sue Richards described the "powerful testimonies" heard by the panel.

They included a recently retired nurse forced into spending part of her pension - earned over a lifetime of service to the NHS - on private treatment.

"She knew that by the time she had reached the front of the queue her condition would have already deteriorated so far that it would not have been a full recovery," said Prof Richards.

"She told us this story with tears in her eyes."