Thousands of residents of Lewisham, south-east London, have signed a letter to Monitor, the sector regulator for health services in the UK. In the letter, they accuse Monitor of pressuring London-based clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) to put services out to tender, and urge the regulator not to do so.

The NHS’s official line on CCGs is that they ‘must not act in an anti-competitive way unless they can demonstrate it is in the interests of patients.’ The Lewisham campaigners are claiming that competition for NHS services is never in the interest of patients, and that they do not want their health services outsourced.

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