The National Health Service is being "parcelled up into bite-sized pieces and handed over to private control", Keep our NHS Public, a campaigning group of doctors and otheropposed to the government's NHS policy and backed by the unions, said yesterday.

Ministers were carrying out a "patchwork privatisation" of the NHS that would turn it "into a tax-funded insurer, paying for care provided by others" where only the NHS logo would survive, the group said.