I am privileged to be old enough to remember my parents' joy at being freed of the worry of health care with the setting up by the post-war Labour government of the National Health Service.

Now, some 60-plus years later I fear that the finest health service in the world could be under terminal threat from ill-conceived revolutionary changes in health care contained in the Health Bill presently going through Parliament.

It is not coincidence that professional bodies ranging from the Royal College of Surgeons, Royal College of Nursing, Royal College of Physicians, The BMA through to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the King's Fund have all expressed concern about the scale and speed of the changes proposed.

Amongst the most concerning changes being proposed by the present Conservative government is the scrapping of Primary Care Trusts and strategic health authorities and the handing to GP consortia an 80 million pound budget to commission health care. Quite properly, the changes raise questions about the financial skills possessed by GPs to handle such large budgets and could the changes lead to the purchasing of the cheapest not necessarily the best health care.

However, perhaps the most deplorable and dishonest spin involved in the change debate is the use by David Cameron and the Health Secretary of inaccurate data relating to health outcomes. In particular the claim by Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, that in Britain, cancer and heart attack survival rates are below European average was shown to be incorrect by Professor John Appleby, Chief Health Economist of the King's Fund – if the present trend continues by 2012 Britain's figures will be the best in Europe, at lowest cost.

The people of Dean have shown over the proposals to sell off the Forest that, when it comes to fighting for that which they believe in, they are up for it. Perhaps it is now time that they looked to their much valued health service.

– Frank Will­iams, Lydney.