OUR NHS was founded 70 years ago as a proudly universal healthcare system, always there for us regardless of age, wealth or health.

At its heart is the principle our health and wellbeing is beyond money or privilege.

But anyone who’s been on a recent trip to the hospital or called your local GP for an appointment knows just how strained it has become.

A GP appointment may take weeks and a wait for an operation may take months.

This is just not the NHS we all know and love.

It was once renowned around the world for its efficiency, professionalism and care but it has become critically ill itself after nine years of neglect.

We cannot sit by as the NHS is slowly starved of the staff, funding and resource it needs – we see it crumbling inch by inch, but this is our NHS and we will not sit idly by.

We see the ways it has been attacked; the underfunding, the shortages of 10,000 doctors and 40,000 nurses, the lack of attention to our ageing, crumbling and unsafe hospitals, but this Government has also been neglecting our NHS by the back door.

Health and social care outsourcing has seen services taken out of public hands, and often handed to private organisations to run at a profit.

In other instances, cash strapped NHS services have been offloaded to organisations who have been asked to deliver better results but without the funding they need.

In both cases the patients lose out.

Locally we have seen the impact of this with the Addaction drugs and alcohol workers who are currently on strike.

They used to be employed directly by the NHS, but their service was put out for bids and their jobs have now been moved to a private charity, but without the pay guarantees they received as NHS employees.

Their incredible and invaluable work tackling the drugs and alcohol crisis we now see so starkly on our streets has been put at risk ultimately because of underfunding to our NHS and our local authorities.

It’s classic Conservatives, passing the buck onto others and washing their hands of responsibility.

But tackling this NHS crisis is more than just funding, we need a total reform of our NHS, reform not seen since its creation in 1948.

We need to put people before profit again.

I believe that means we should follow Scotland and Wales by scrapping prescription charges, charges that over 80 per cent of GPs say result in some patients skipping the medication they need.

It also means solving our social care crisis that is placing such a heavy demand on our NHS by providing free personal care and investing £350m for training to develop the social care workforce.

The best days of our NHS lay ahead but we must end its current spiralling run into the ground by treating it with the respect we all hold for our national treasure.

What do you think about the MP's column this week? Email newsdesk@leighjournal.co.uk.