Labour's GP Pledge As Thousands Join Demo

Labour will work with the Government to give GPs greater powers to commission services if it drops its NHS reforms, the shadow health secretary has told Sky News.

Andy Burnham said Labour would be prepared to negotiate with the Government about ways to improve the commissioning of services but said the legislation, which reaches the House of Lords this week, would see the NHS turned into a "free market".

Labour peers will be tabling an amendment calling on the Government to ditch its controversial Health and Social Care Bill.

The Government has argued the reforms, which include a push for more competition, will improve patient care as well as helping make £20bn of savings.

Mr Burnham told Sky News' Dermot Murnaghan he had written to Health Secretary Andrew Lansley , whom he called on to "listen and change course".

He said: "I've always said the biggest challenge facing the NHS is a financial challenge and this huge top-down reorganisation is a dangerous distraction from that.

"It is quite clear that the Health Secretary has failed to establish a consensus and get the country behind his reforms.

"My message to him is: 'Please stop digging in. Drop your Bill and we will work with you constructively to reform NHS commissioning'.

"This Bill goes far, far wider than commissioning, it basically turns our wonderful NHS into a free market. We will not have that."

His offer came as thousands of people are protesting outside Parliament today as part of a demonstration against the Bill.

Direct action group UK Uncut said trade unionists, pensioners, comedians and health workers are among those hoping to block Westminster Bridge in a "spectacular act of mass civil disobedience".

A UK Uncut spokesman said: "Yes it will be disruptive and it will stop the traffic.

"But this is an emergency and if we want to save our NHS we need to shout as loud as we can. No one voted for this Bill, but together we can stop it."

A Department of Health spokesman said the future of the NHS "could not be secured" without the Bill.

"The principles of our modernisation plans - patient power, clinical leadership, a focus on results - have been widely supported, as reported by the independent NHS Future Forum," he said.

"We accepted all of their recommendations to strengthen the Bill but the most destabilising factor for the NHS would be greater uncertainty and delay of reform to the ultimate detriment of patients."