How are the Tories celebrating the NHS’s 73rd birthday this month? By introducing a Health and Care Bill that undermines its foundations: increasing privatisation, putting private companies at the heart of NHS management and paving the way to sell off our health data.

The NHS is currently being left to deal with record waiting lists and a big bang reopening that looks set to push Covid hospitalisations up. Using this emergency to ram through this corporate takeover bill is reckless. Forcing NHS staff to implement another top-down Tory reorganisation will take people away from the tasks of tackling growing treatment lists and coping with rapidly rising Covid cases.

I voted against the Health and Care Bill at its second reading. Now more than ever, the money we spend on the NHS must go into the essential health services we all rely on, not into the pockets of corporate shareholders and Tory party donors. After a decade of austerity, cuts and privatisation, the last thing the NHS needs is more of the same medicine.

Watch my recent PMQ to Boris Johnson about keeping the NHS public.