British health boss heckled at No. 10

Angry protesters yelled “traitor” at Andrew Lansley as he was entering No.10 on Monday morning to seek advice from pro-reform health organizations on how to enact his National Health Service (NHS) Bill, British media reported.

The Health Secretary’s path to Downing Street was blocked by one elderly campaigner who shouted: “People are waiting for a bed and waiting times are going up – you can wait for a change.”

Other protesters at the Downing St gates chanted: “Kill the Bill, it will make you ill” and held placards that read: “Saving the NHS is a matter of life and death” with a picture of a tombstone inscribed with the words “NHS: 1948-2011.”

Campaigners and politicians branded the meeting with those in favor of NHS reform a “PR disaster” and a case of “divide and rule,” with those opposed to it such as the Royal College of GPs, the British Medical Association and Unison given the cold shoulder.

“If Prime Minister David Cameron thought this meeting would be a PR coup he has made another terrible misjudgment”, said Easington Labour MP Grahame Morris.

“This meeting has turned into a summit of the uninvited with the major trade unions and royal colleges representing 90 percent of NHS staff excluded”, said Morris.

Labour leader Ed Miliband had earlier accused ministers of having a “bunker mentality” in a speech at Homerton Hospital in Hackney, London.

David Cameron and Lansley were holding a roundtable discussion with chairs of the emerging GP-led clinical commissioning groups and leaders of the Royal Colleges.

However some of the biggest critics of the Health and Social Care Bill have been left out in the cold.

MOL/JR/HE

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