Hospitals will close, tens of thousands of staff will be made redundant, and healthcare will become more expensive if the UK government’s plans for controversial reforms to the NHS in England go ahead, the country’s biggest union claims.

In a briefing for MPs and media to coincide with the second reading debate on the Health and Social Care Bill, the union Unite said that the biggest shake up in the history of the NHS would herald the “slow-motion privatisation” of the service.

Gail Cartmail, assistant general secretary of the union, said, “This bill will destroy the NHS. It will allow NHS staff, skills, buildings, and resources to be snatched by profit hungry companies. It will shove NHS patients to the back of …