In 2012 I wrote my first letter to the Standard about the threat that the Health and Social Care Act posed to our NHS.

Seven years on I am saddened to note that my warnings have come to pass.

This Government has spent the last nine years cutting NHS spending in real terms, creating a pressured working environment for its staff, capping their pay, stopping nursing bursaries and driving people away because of stress.

Figures show the Government has failed to meet its 2020 target to increase GP numbers while only this week laughably promising to increase them through “on the job training” and international recruitment which is a polite word for resource extraction or stealing the doctors from other countries who will then be deprived of those vital staff to serve their own healthcare needs.

It is all to make up for the Conservatives’ own lack of investment and long-term forward planning.

Moreover, the promised extra spending will not make up for the years of decay and public money will still be going into private profit.

Our health service no longer exists as a national body.

Ongoing reforms have created a geographically fragmented health service.

The US healthcare companies who have been embedded into our health service for decades have been working behind the scenes to create a profitable clone of US-style healthcare.

Integrated Health Care systems are being touted as the next big improvement when in fact it is the opposite.

They rely on “self-care”, volunteers, apps and lower skilled professionals replacing doctors and nurses. They are designed to restrict care and generate “efficiencies”, or in other words profits.

The Tories claim the principle of free at the point of need remains key to the provision of healthcare, but the reality is what will be left as free at the point of need?

Hasn’t anyone noticed how many treatments are now restricted or no longer available; doctors no longer able to determine by their own clinical judgement whether a person should be referred for further investigation; patients being offered treatment privately?

Hasn’t anyone noticed the huge increase in the number of adverts for private healthcare on TV, radio and even in email boxes. Aren’t the alarm bells ringing?

We need a Government that will reinstate the NHS as a comprehensive, publicly paid for, managed and delivered service not a clone of US healthcare and all that means.

Prue Plumridge

London Road, Maldon