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NHS activists seize Tories' Millbank HQ

DAVID CAMERON’S face is, no doubt, plastered all over the walls of Tory HQ — but yesterday it was on activists occupying the building to protest against NHS privatisation.

NHS Direct Action activists took over the nasty party’s office block lobby demanding a block on the sale of 70 per cent of NHS contracts to private providers.

Kerry Smith was among a dozen who took part in the Millbank Tower sit-in to unmask Tory plans to “sell-off the NHS piece by piece.”

The London nurse explained: “We are taking this action to name and shame those responsible.

“As David Cameron courts big business at the Tory Party conference we have had to resort to occupying Millbank to get our message across.”

As well as sporting the Prime Minister’s mugshot, the 15 campaigners also wore facial cutouts of former health secretary and privatisation fanatic Andrew Lansley.

Holding large banners reading: “When they sell off the NHS — We Bleed, They Profit,” protesters also read the names of MPs likely to profit from the NHS sale.

The cosy relationship between Tory MPs and health privateers was made abundantly clear last night by an invite-only soiree on the sidelines of the party’s conference hosted by the right-wing Social Market Foundation think-tank.

Keep Our NHS Public revealed that the health insurer Bupa-funded fringe will be attended by Life Sciences Minister George Freeman and SMF director Nigel Keohane, who has trumpeted charges for seeing GPs and lamented the slow pace of privatisation.

KONP co-chairwoman Professor Sue Richards said: “A health minister, Bupa and the Social Market Foundation will be putting their heads together to work out how to privatise the integration of health and social care.

“I wonder when they will let the public know about any of this.  The massive changes they have already undertaken to privatise and minimise the NHS were not in their manifesto in 2010.

“This private plotting suggests that the public will be kept in the dark about this initiative too. Little wonder that the public does not trust the Conservatives with our NHS.”

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