[2nd Allocated Day]

My hon. Friend is close to health workers and health professionals in her constituency, and she knows that people are leaving the service in droves. It is not just managers who will be sacked from primary care trusts or transferred across to they do not know what kind of organisation elsewhere. Clinicians are also deciding that they no longer think the job is worth the candle, because of the endless top-down reorganisation—something we were told we would not see from this Government, although it just keeps on coming. I fear that the situation will get worse in coming months. We will have to wait and see what the capacity of these new CCGs—and, potentially, the national commissioning board—will be, because we do not yet know who will be left standing at the end of this endless round of changes. In summary—[Interruption.] It is a long summary, and if hon. Members keep talking it will get longer. In summary, we have had eight months of debate in this place, two—and soon to be three—versions of the Bill, with 1,500 amendments, hundreds of protest meetings across the country, and 450,000 signatories to a petition trying to ““kill the Bill””. Those extraordinarily high numbers are a reflection of the importance of the NHS to the British people, to the NHS workers and to us, the Labour party. For many in our society the NHS remains the shining symbol of the civilised collectivist values that first informed its creation 60 years ago, and they rightly view its continuation and their stake in it as part of their British birthright. We in the Labour party view it as a cherished part of our heritage. It also shines a light for us to the future, and we will not stand by and let how we have known it to be for these past 60 years fall into the pages of history. In 1946 we legislated to realise the vision of a collaborative and comprehensive national and public service, as part of the essential glue of that post-war society. This Bill promises instead to give birth to a denationalised NHS—a denatured NHS—divided by competition law, and conquered by profit seekers and carpetbaggers from across the globe. Ministers, especially the Secretary of State, should remember that it is never too late to change one's mind—it is never too late to save the NHS. We are appealing for them to do so and they would do well to do so. They should remember, too, the dire and, I trust, accurate prediction and warning given by the man who was proud to be the midwife to the NHS—the Welshman, Nye Bevan—in 1946. He said that"““no government that attempts to destroy the Health Service can hope to command the support of the British people.””" That was true when he wrote it in 1951 and it will be true in 2015 when the Prime Minister asks the people to trust him on the NHS. I hate to tell the Secretary of State and, indeed, the Prime Minister this, but no amount of Ashcroft-funded airbrushed billboards pleading with people to trust the Tories on the NHS will count, because the evidence of their perfidy is written in black and white throughout this Bill, and it will be remembered at the next election.