Sir – The proponents of competition in the NHS are strong and they seem to be found everywhere. But also strong is the tradition of co-operation. This is not ‘provider interests’, it is a widespread desire, among patients and tax payers as well as workers in the health service, for a public service based on goodwill and solidarity.

Any of us can fall ill, and when we do we all need care and healing.

This is the solid foundation which has been built on since 1948. The point about competition in today’s world is that it does not just mean healthy rivalry among a mixture of service providers but is code for something else — the release of predatory financial interests, which the proponents of co-operation rightly fear.

Big international health companies, which care nothing for co-operation, are what we will get if EU competition law is allowed into the NHS, as it almost certainly will be unless the revised Health bill is carefully drafted.

They are waiting at the door. Once invited in they will do everything in their power to take over.

This is not innovation, of which the NHS is perfectly capable now.

Nor is it efficiency, except in the crude sense of cutting wages and services.

The administrative costs of competition are not trivial either. It is not worth sacrificing a well-tested and much-valued culture of co-operation for the possible advantages of having our health care delivered by the winners of a competitive tendering process.

Jeanne Warren, Garsington