Furious Walsall pensioners fight to save NHS

Up to 100 people, some armed with placards and banners, joined forces for the meeting organised by Walsall Pensioner's Convention.

Guest speakers included Lord Hunt, the former health administrator and a Labour member of the House of Lords.

He was invited to talk at the gathering at Central Methodist Hall which was arranged amid concerns over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP), a proposed free trade agreement between the European Union and America.

It has lead to widespread concern that the NHS could be opened up to private American businesses.

Peter Last, chairman of the Walsall Pensioners' Convention, said he was pleased with the turn out on Thursday.

The 77-year-old from Rushall said: "We are all concerned about this creeping privatisation. If things are privatised then of course you have to pay for things.

"I was pleasantly surprised by who attended. It was the Walsall Pensioners' Convention running it but there were an awful lot of young people at the event."

Others that attended the rally in Ablewell Street were NHS activist Diana Smith of Stafford and a range of health visitors who work in Walsall.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt denied claims he is 'privatising' the NHS when he dropped into the West Midlands last week to back the Tory election campaign.

The Conservative minister refuted claims there was a backdoor privatisation of cancer care in Staffordshire during a visit to Cannock Hospital.

It follows a move by four clinical commissioning groups, including Cannock and Stafford, to contract out both cancer and end-of-life services in a move worth around £1.2 billion.

It also emerged last week that Walsall Manor Hospital is the fifth-worst performing trust in the country for its A&E waiting time figures

The hospital saw 77 per cent of patients within four hours in the first three months of 2015.