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TORY bruiser Norman Tebbit has launched an amazing attack on the Government’s health reforms.

The ex-Cabinet minister and Margaret Thatcher’s former hatchet man admitted grave concerns they could do “considerable” damage to NHS hospitals.

His comments are the latest blow to David Cameron, following criticism from doctors, nurses and midwives.

Lord Tebbit said Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s plans could bring “unfair” competition, enabling private firms to cherry pick.

He said: “It’s fine for the private sector, which doesn’t have responsibility for teaching and bringing on young surgeons, to take the straightforward and easy stuff.

“But that means the public sector is then left without the base of work to subsidise the more difficult surgery and the teaching of surgeons.”

Lord Tebbit, whose wife Margaret was left in a wheelchair after the IRA Brighton bomb attack in 1984, spoke of his experience as chairman of a charitable fund which helped the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre NHS Trust. He told how a local private hospital was contracted by the NHS to help shorten waiting lists.

“But the damage it did to the finances of Nuffield and its ability to carry out training...was quite considerable,” he said. “The private sector hospital had neither any obligation, nor wish, to take on the more difficult and complex surgery.

“It had no obligation to teach the next generation of surgeons the skills they would need to deal with such work.

“That was all left to be done by the NHS hospital. But the NHS hospital lost income from that bread-and-butter work. It no longer had enough of the routine work for young surgeons to gain the experience needed to take on difficult and complex work and it ran into real financial difficulties.” The Tory peer suggested that one solution could be to privatise all hospital trusts.

He said: “We may have to be very radical and undo the mischief that Nye Bevan did when the health service was created.

He added: “The Beveridge Report did not mention nationalisation of hospitals. It was Bevan who said they should be.”

But Lord Tebbit made clear he was a strong supporter of the NHS. He revealed: “The only member of my family to get private sector medicine is the dog.”

The Health and Social Care Bill has already been delayed going to the Lords until after the May 5 local elections amid fears of a backlash at the ballot box.

Labour leader Ed Miliband last night condemned the proposals in a letter to Mr Cameron. He wrote: “The conduct of your Government and its approach towards changes which will have dramatic repercussions for thousands of hard-working people in our NHS, not to mention millions of patients who rely on it, shows an incredible arrogance, bordering on contempt.”

Voice of the Mirror: Page 8