In February the BMA launched to the general public its “Look after our NHS” campaign, which aims to stop the increasing commercialisation of our health service (BMJ 2010;340:c884, doi:10.1136/bmj.c884). This does not mean we believe that the private sector doesn’t have a role to play, but it should be used only in cooperation with existing NHS services and in circumstances where the NHS cannot fulfil a key requirement for patients. Unfortunately the NHS at the moment is being submitted to a programme of reckless commercialisation that threatens to undermine the principles on which it was founded.

The response to our campaign from Civitas and other pro-market groups was predictably hostile. Accompanying the vitriolic attacks on the BMA was a rosy picture of a healthcare system where the NHS and private providers compete on an equal footing for the custom of patients—with the tacit implication that this arrangement allows the private sector to deliver a whole host of benefits and innovations that the sluggish public sector cannot.

At the centre …