Plans by the government to improve the NHS by moving a major proportion of treatment to the private sector and to pay by results will wreck the NHS, a BMA conference heard.

London would be ripe for being turned into a marketplace for health care, with its “high presence of private and commercial health care and a high density of providers able to make the most of opportunities,” said Dr Chaand Nagpaul, a member of the BMA's General Practitioners Committee.

He was speaking at a seminar last week organised by the BMA's London Regional Medical Council on the implications for London of the NHS improvement plan. Dr …