OUR National Health Service is seen throughout the world as one of the most efficient and effective ways of delivering health care.

Yet the calling of a ‘major incident’ at Scarborough Hospital earlier this month and the abandonment of the Hinchingbrooke Hospital by the private company Circle, because it could no longer make a profit, has sent out a warning to all of us about the future of our NHS.

The increased demand for services at the Accident and Emergency department at Scarborough, and other hospitals, was caused by seasonal factors and a 30 per cent shortage of doctors.

There is no quick fix.

Recruiting and training doctors and nurses, and keeping them once they are trained, needs long-term planning.

To keep the NHS properly funded will take £2 billion extra a year for the next five years.

This can only come from extra taxation on those who can afford it and increased National Insurance contributions linked directly to the NHS. The creeping privatisation of the NHS and the introduction of business targets and jargon is to be deplored and reversed by the next Labour Government.

The Tory Party draws much of its funding from private health care firms and cannot be trusted with our NHS. The NHS is there to care for its patients and not make profits for private company shareholders.

Alan Avery, Prospective Parliamentary candidate for the Labour Party in Thirsk and Malton, Middleton Road, Pickering.