SHAME on Mark Harper MP. His attempt to belittle the organic SOS AGAIN campaign to keep our community hospitals truly within the NHS seeks to reduce the argument to profit.

But, Mr Harper, we already know a social enterprise is a not-for-profit business.

You cannot deny, however, it is a business nonetheless and as such it represents the wholesale marketisation of our local health services.

Your attempt to divert the debate is as shameful as the local council leader's 'personal assurances' from Gloucestershire Care Services that everything will be fine.

Shame on Mr Harper having stood up against New Labour's health plans when they threatened the Dilke and Lydney only a year or so before his election as our MP. Now he's leading the support for our care to be opened up to the free market.

What's more he has no response to the risk we are putting these community hospitals under. It is my understanding that Glou­cestershire Care Services will operate the services for only three years at which point an alternative vendor might be sought.

This could well be a for-profit business just like Southern Cross who folded recently. What then the future of local health services?

American companies (remember they don't have an NHS) are just salivating at the gates. They already have won contracts to analyse the census and oversee school examinations to name but two.  Of course, the marketisation of the service itself might see Gloucestershire Care Services fail, just as the significantly larger, fully private Southern Cross did.

What's happening here in October is the fast-track to what will happen nationally to the NHS under Langley's reforms. This is the 'Big society' in action, where choice reigns supreme. Except choice where it really matters: the choice to preserve the status quo which just happens to have served ordinary people well since the formation of the NHS over 60 years ago. Granted, there's plenty of room for improvement in the NHS, as there is in any organisation – no less so in the country's biggest single employer – but that's not a good reason to move public services into pure market economics. It won't work for universities just as it hasn't worked for rail safety.

Wherever essential services are defined by their financial expenditure alone then they have ceased to become a public service and are merely slaves to shareholders and global economics. And so the 'modernisation' and 'efficiency savings'; which means redundancies and out-sourcing, closures and reduction in services.

Mr Harper, our district council leader and Cllr Hale (who has the portfolio on these matters in the local cabinet system) all need to realise that nearly 2,000 people have already signed a petition against this outsourcing. But these local leaders' influence could play a big part in calling for a halt or at least delay until a proper local debate and consultation on the future of our local hospitals is taken.

But they will only listen if local people raise their voices (as we so proudly did with HOOF, the first SOS campaign and the closure of Cinderford library etc.). I rather fancy that, for too long, our elected representatives have failed to ensure our interests are represented and protected, even though that is what they were elected to serve us.

If Mr Harper's Government is so keen on choice, where was the consultation?  After all, it is local money, labour and goodwill that has created and maintained our community hospitals. Legally they're probably not obliged to consult. That doesn't make it right.

Act now before it's too late. Write to your councillor and MP. Then there's a public meeting at the Miner's Welfare Hall in Cinderford on September 5 (7.30pm) with speakers from Unison, Unite and the RCN – all the main unions representing NHS staff, but this is about our community hospitals and it is more than the workers' livelihoods at stake here.

We must move quickly to have even a whiff of a chance to halt and delay the October take-over by Gloucestershire Care Services.

– Carl Spilby, St Briavels.