Cancer Not for Profit's Gail Gregory speaks for most of us when she warns that the number of private companies in the running for £1.2 billion of NHS contracts in Staffordshire "confirms our worst fears."

Only two public-sector bodies, University Hospitals of North Midlands and the Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust, are among the five "prequalified" bidders for cancer care and the seven for end-of-life care.

The others are a dodgy bunch of private health firms such as United Health UK and companies who do not even specialise in healthcare.

One bidder is Interserve Investments, a firm that has grown fat off our NHS already by operating a portfolio of the private finance initiative (PFI) contracts which have lumped our hospitals with unmanageable levels of debt.

Another is the US-based Computer Sciences Corporation, a firm that deals with IT services, and a third is the ubiquitous privateer Virgin's care arm.

The contract - which will run for 10 years without a break clause - is supposedly needed to manage the overall provision of cancer care in Staffordshire, covering all four of the county's clinical commissioning groups (CCGs).

As public-service union Unison has pointed out, the CCGs are "effectively outsourcing their basic commissioning responsibilities."

They will be handing their authority to determine what services are required where to an outside organisation.

This makes a mockery of the idea that decisions on health provision should be made by medical professionals, a major plank of the Con-Dem coalition's propaganda when it forced through Andrew Lansley's Health and Social Care Act.

But if the reality of the biggest sale of NHS contracts so far contradicts Tory lies about the purpose of their NHS-wrecking Act, it is quite in tune with their real agenda - the wholesale privatisation of our National Health Service.

Even if one of the two NHS bodies wins the contract, Staffordshire residents will not be safe from the grasping reach of shady commercial operators keen to profit from cancer.

The winner will be a "prime contractor" responsible for managing other contracts, so an NHS provider could still sell contracts for particular services to the private sector.

The whole episode is a colossal waste of public money - the NHS bidders are already spending on their bids, while whoever wins the prime contractor slot will be paid to manage contracts that would otherwise be managed in-house.

But saving our money has never been the Tory aim, for all their sound and fury over the deficit.

Lansley's Bill was voted on by hundreds of parliamentarians with connections to private healthcare companies.

The Tory strategy on health was and is concerned with feathering their friends' nests, not with providing decent healthcare for all.

That makes Labour's promise to reverse Lansley's Act all the more important.

And MPs will have a chance to undo the damage later this month, when Clive Efford will present a Bill to that effect to the Commons.

With the Liberal Democrats facing electoral massacre next May, the coalition is vulnerable - many of them could be put under pressure to back Efford's Bill to save their own skins.

Everyone concerned with the future of our health service should ensure their MP knows where we stand - and that failure to help save our NHS will cost them dearly at the general election.