‘Defend our NHS’ campaign, designed to highlight Labour's opposition to changes will be launched by Andy Burnham, shadow health secretary. Burnham has stated that Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s reform White Paper is unjustified.

The paper promises to enable patients to make more choices by scrap unjustified targets and cutting bureaucratic control.

More power would be given to GPs by phasing out strategic health authorities and primary care trusts (PCTs).

Burnham stated that spending billions on the reorganisation was unnecessary and dangerous as the amount planned to be spent can be used for something constructive and useful.

He added that despite government promising that frontline health services would be protected, care is already being cut back.

He would say while launching the campaign, "It is an ideological experiment which threatens to unpick the very fabric of our precious NHS. It is a recipe for a postcode lottery writ large and signals the end of the NHS as we have known it. The chaos is starting now and I urge people to act now to defend our NHS.”