CHEERLEADER for Wallasey's Labour MP Angela Eagle, Audrey Moore, claims I do not "understand" the proposed closure of five NHS walk-in centres in Wirral, and tells me to hand out copies of a Labour Party petition circulating on the issue - MPs lead fight (Wirral Globe, November 7).

For her information, I have already signed the petition, but history teaches us, locally and nationally, petitions are not enough to prevent NHS cuts.

More than 18,000 people signed a petition opposing the closure of wards six and seven at Wallasey's Victoria Central Hospital back in 2005, but the then-Labour government ignored it and closed the wards regardless resulting in the loss of 52 beds.

I was actively involved in that campaign, and attended all of the public meetings, lobbies of the council, and public demonstrations opposing the closures.

Angela Eagle was not present at any of them, confining her role to making fruitless pleas behind closed doors to the Primary Care Trust, and to the Labour government.

Ms Eagle also became a junior treasury minister in Blair’s Labour government (1997-2010), which saw an explosion of the Private Finance Initiative in the NHS, whereby capitalist developers were allowed to build and own NHS properties, which were then leased out to NHS hospitals, clinics, and surgeries.

As a result NHS trusts the length and breadth of the country are saddled with huge debts that run the length of these "leases."

The creeping privatisation of the NHS, begun by Thatcher’s Tory government, continued remorselessly under Blair’s Labour government, and continues to this day.

Your letters page also had a very revealing letter from Pat Cleary of the Green Party on the establishment in Wirral of an "integrated commissioning hub" for NHS services from next April.

This is but the latest bureaucratic manoeuvre in Tory plans for NHS privatisation.

The threatened closure of the five walk-in centres is a central part of Tory privatisation plans aimed at the creation of "superhospitals" and the eradication of local NHS services.

James Roberts, Wallasey