The Westminster Establishment has seized on allegations relating to the death of patients waiting for heart surgery at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff to demonise the Welsh NHS.

The process began last year but has escalated in recent weeks, from Tory PM David Cameron lambasting Cardiff's Labour administration for failing to "reform" the NHS to a special feature in Rupert Murdoch's Times at the weekend which used disparities in health outcomes between Wales and England to claim vindication for Andrew Lansley's privatising Health and Social Care Act.

In fact, as this newspaper's columnist Roy Jones has explained, lower life expectancy and higher rates of disability in Wales tell us little about the Welsh health service.

They are a reflection of the country's industrial and mining past as well as of higher poverty levels in Wales.

Comparing life expectancy in Yorkshire or north-east England with London would also reveal a disparity, but these regions are all subject to the English NHS and Lansley's repugnant bid to marketise it.

This is not to say all criticism of the Welsh NHS is illegitimate or to dismiss the experiences of Labour MP Ann Clwyd, whose description of her husband being treated "like a battery hen," which kicked off the current round of NHS-bashing, clearly came from the heart.

As a public service, when the NHS does not perform to the high standards patients and their families have a right to expect it must to be held to account.

But Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones points out that Ms Clwyd has not provided evidence or facts to back up her claims of a "crisis" in the health service.

And Royal College of Nursing in Wales (RCN-W) leader Tina Donnelly notes that despite what amount to very serious allegations against nurses at the University Hospital of Wales, the nurses themselves have not been approached and the RCN-W has "not been in any shape or form asked to give evidence to any inquiry, nor have we been party to it."

This raises suspicions that the relentless attacks are designed to undermine patient confidence in the Welsh health service rather than address any problems that may exist.

The Conservative motivation for denigrating the NHS is obvious. The lower the reputation of our health service the easier it is to justify market-oriented "reforms" - although as heroic resistance to outsourcing services and closing hospitals across the country has shown, the British public are still ready to defend their NHS.

Attacking the Welsh health service in particular suits the Tories in Parliament, since undermining Britain's only Labour government helps discredit the opposition.

More than that, Wales - like Scotland - has so far resisted attempts to flog off the provision of health services to "any willing provider."

Devolved governments in Cardiff and Edinburgh continue to protect the publicly funded, publicly accountable nature of the health service which the Con-Dem coalition is doing all it can to destroy in England.

For all their talk of competition, the health privateers desperate to make a killing from people's illnesses do not relish the prospect of their performance being judged against that of a non-privatised health service.

An Establishment propaganda barrage is being directed at the NHS in Wales to reinforce the "public bad, private good" mantra that motivates the posh-boy Cabinet.

Progressives should not be taken in by it.