Ed Miliband reaches out to nurses in Labour fight against NHS reforms

Ed Miliband will on Tuesday offer to join forces with Britain's nurses to fight the government's "reckless" reforms of the NHS, which he will depict as a betrayal of David Cameron's pre-election commitments. The Labour leader is expected to receive a warm reception when he addresses the Royal College of Nursing Congress in Harrogate after a bumpy reception on Monday for Andrew Lansley. Miliband will announce that Labour is to launch a new service, NHS Check, that will allow patients and staff worried about the impact of the government's reforms to register their concerns with the party. The Labour leader will hail nurses as professionals "on the frontline of patient care for the NHS" but also in the "first line in the defence of our NHS". Miliband will say: "You tried to engage with the government. You expressed the concerns that nurses were expressing to you. You warned the government of the risks it was running." He will say that the government refused to listen as nurses warned that resources were being diverted away from the frontline and patients were waiting longer for treatment. "The government has been acting like they are the masters, not the servants, of the NHS. They are not the masters. Not this government. Not any government. Our health service is owned by patients, professionals and the people." Miliband will say that, as prime minister, he would not be able to promise that he would agree with the RCN on everything. But he will add: "I will never do what this government did: dismiss you as just a 'vested interest'. You are not. You are the defenders of the health service. "I want to start working with you now, to forge a partnership with you now, about some of the big long-term challenges facing the future of the NHS. And I want to start working with you now to protect the values of the NHS and to hold the government to account for what's going on. You are not just on the frontline in our NHS. You are the first line in the defence of our NHS." Labour says that the government's NHS reforms, in which around £60bn of the NHS's £100bn budget is being devolved to new GP-led consortia, is a breach of the coalition agreement. The Tories and Liberal Democrats pledged in the agreement to "stop the top-down reorganisations of the NHS that have got in the way of patient care". Lansley says the reforms are consistent with the coalition agreement because they are designed to devolve power.