Central London bridge blocked to save the NHS

Tax avoidance activists UK Uncut led thousands of health workers, pensioners and students who swept onto the bridge for a mass sit-in symbolically located between the Houses of Parliament and the St Thomas hospital across the Thames.

The Block The Bridge, Block The Bill protest took place on the eve a critical House of Lords vote on the Health and Social Care Bill which will hand power to GP consortia and allow private providers into the service en masse.

Tory ministers claim the plans will slash health-care overheads.

But NHS campaigners warn that they will spell the beginning of the end of a state National Health Service.

Public Health for Cumbria director and former UK Public Health Association chairman Dr John Ashton, who joined the protests, said there was real anger across the NHS at the threat to this most cherished public institution.

"This confused and convoluted Bill threatens to undermine the guarantee of health security irrespective of position or wealth and, at the same time, creates the conditions for private health-care companies to come in and cherry-pick profitable parts of care," he said.

"I am proud that public health specialists have been able to give voice to this anger over the past few days, an anger which has no political boundaries!"

Civil Service union PCS leader Mark Serwotka said that the Bill represents the "gravest threat to the NHS" since its foundation.

"Peaceful protest and civil disobedience have a long and proud history in this country, and are a perfectly legitimate response to plans that no-one voted for and no-one wants," he said.

"This protest will send an important message of support to the brilliant doctors, nurses and other health-care workers who work day in, day out to make our health service the envy of the world, and an equally important message of opposition to a Tory-led government trying to unpick all of this."

Protester Benjamin Timberley said it was the first time his whole family had turned out to protest.

"We've got a government which is trying to auction off the public health service in chinks," he said.

His dad Trevor told the Morning Star that he depended on the NHS for his heart and epilepsy medication.

"I wouldn't be alive if it wasn't for the NHS," he said.

UK Uncut is demanding a crackdown on corporate tax-dodging instead of public-sector cuts.

Its researchers estimates suggest up to £120 billion a year is lost to the public purse through corporate tax avoidance - more than the entire NHS budget for 2011.

rorym@peoples-press.com