I HAVE been going along to health authority meetings, off and on, for more than 35 years. Usually the language is calm, littered with acronyms, the latest management clichés and medical references that only the privileged few fully understand.

I have learned gradually how to decipher the subtleties of these NHS bureaucratic linguistics and read between the lines to try to find out what is really going on. The meeting of the Shadow Joint Health and Overview Scrutiny Committee on Thursday, November 8, was very different.

GPs from the Primary Health Sector came along and said openly that morale was at an all-time low and plans for contractual changes and an expected 20 per cent reduction in finance would be a “disaster”. There was no concocted language to cover up a problem.

Just a straight, open denunciation that the planned changes would “severely impact on GP surgeries”. Bold, open and clear. I was glad they were honest.

The chair questioned why the privatised surgeries that had been introduced under the last Labour Government were costing the taxpayer three times more than those run directly by the Primary Care Trust. There came no real reply, just a series of bureaucratic phrases that translated as “what did you expect?”

It was clear that private companies were very good at putting together sophisticated bids that allowed them to build in added profits for undertaking NHS work. Local GPs surgeries tend to be very good at dealing with patients’ medical needs and don’t have lawyers, contract specialists and marketing executives to write bids. The result is the business innocents are gradually swept aside as the health companies move in.

CLLR DAVID WILLIAMS, Green councillor, London Road, Oxford