When the coalition came into power the NHS had the highest ever patient satisfaction rate. You have to ask yourselves how it is possible that in just four years the NHS has been brought into life support. I am not a gambling woman but I know that if the chances of getting run over are 50/50 I wouldn't cross the road.

Yet one in ten senior NHS managers rated their chances of meeting the £20bn so called "efficiency savings" as 50/50 according to a recent survey by the King's Fund.

More than half of managers surveyed identified a high or very high risk of missing the cuts target and nearly a third reported a detriment to patient care over the past year.

GPs have warned of impending chaos as they struggle to manage on reduced budgets and A&E departments have given notice of a winter crisis. To make matters worse the government is lining up walk-in centres for closure.

The crisis in health care funding in England is exacerbated by the costly changes introduced by the Health and Social Care Act, changes that ironically open the floodgates to private sector companies who are accountable to shareholders and boards intent on making profits.

Unite, together with War on Want and Change to Win, exposed the level of tax evasion by one private sector player that benefits from NHS income.

In 2007, Alliance Boots left the FTSE 100, went private and is now based in Switzerland. Our research shows that over six years Alliance Boots has avoided paying £1bn in taxes - despite drawing an estimated 40 per cent of its British revenue from services it supplies to the NHS.

To understand the scale of what we lost the £1bn equates to more than two years prescription charges for all of England or 185,000 hip replacements.

Not one of us voted for such dismantling of our NHS that seeks to replace cooperation with competition, fragmenting services and pitching one health provider against another.

Our NHS is being frogmarched toward the US model, which squanders a huge percentage of expenditure on complex administration.

Labour in opposition has pledged to repeal the Health and Social Care Act and Unite wants Labour to go further. There is no place in Britain for a "market" in health care, internal or external.

The vision of Aneurin Bevan was a national health service. Bevan knew that a health service for just the poorest in society would be a poor health service. So the NHS was established on the principle that "Everyone - rich or poor, man, woman or child - can use any part of it."

It is this vision and the post-war Labour government's bold economic policy that tackled disease and health inequalities, built decent homes, schools and universities intended for the many not just the few. And all achieved with a bigger debt and deficit than Britain faces today following the global economic crisis triggered by casino style banking in 2008.

That is why Unite is calling for a resurgence of the "Spirit of '45."

It is time to take sides. Unite is for an alternative to austerity that has resulted in health and economic inequalities not seen in Britain since the depression of the 1930s.

The necessity to defend our NHS in this its 65th year has never been more urgent. The TUC mobilisation that circled the Tories in Manchester was great but we need more action. Unite has pledged to defend the NHS by any means possible.

The campaign to defend health services in Lewisham showed what can be achieved when we pull together, trade unions alongside community organisations.

Gail Cartmail, Assistant General Secretary Unite