Letwin on NHS: It is privatisation

David Cameron and Andrew Lansley are desperate to avoid the suggestion that they are privatising the NHS.

But it seems that cabinet minister Oliver Letwin didn’t get the memo.

He said last week that putting private companies in charge of schools and hospitals would soon “become not a matter of political debate but straightforward and obvious as a way of conducting business in this country”.

Letwin has boasted about the Tory threat to the NHS before. He reportedly said in 2004 that the NHS “will not exist” within five years of a Tory government.