The internet is going to destroy socialism because people’s mobile phones will tell them to go to a private doctor instead of the NHS.

It must be true because a leading Tory MP told me so at a meeting at the Tory conference organised by tax-avoiding tech firm Google.

Tory MP for Windsor Adam Afriye is one of the party’s IT gurus, thanks to a successful, tech-oriented business career before he entered Parliament.

He told us over croissants and Danish pastries at the breakfast meeting during the Tories’ Manchester conference that “I think digital can be the end of socialism.”

He thinks digital will destroy “one-size-fits-all” state services.

Afriye told us he imagined an app on people’s phones called “keep me well” that would offer health advice - people could ask their phones what to do if they felt poorly.

The digital device could recommend they go and “wait for ages in a casualty” at a local hospital. But it could also say: “There is a private GP here” who could help instead.

So digital destroys the NHS, thereby ending socialism.

Most Morning Star readers have probably spotted the flaw in this cunning plan - the reason we don’t all go to private doctors isn’t because a lack of apps on our phones giving Tory advice.

We can’t afford private medicine - and even if we could we wouldn’t want it.

We look at countries where people have to buy their health care, like the US, and see mean and brutal societies.

We prefer the NHS because it is a better, collective, humane way of providing health care.

Google paid for a meeting where Tory MPs could call for the end of the NHS as part of its conference lobbying business.

The firm does very well in Britain, getting all the legal, educational and infrastructure support it needs to make money while paying very low taxes for the privilege.

So funding meetings at the Conservative - and Labour - conferences is a cheap way of buying influence with a little political flattery.

Google often talks about how modern it is and how its “disruptive digital technology” helps to create new market value, but the firm fits into very old patterns.

Its Tory conference meeting was run by Google “public policy executive” Naomi Gummer.

That name might seem familiar. She is former Tory minister John Gummer’s niece.

Her dad, Lord Chadlington, is a Tory-funding lobbyist, who is chairman of the Conservative Party in Witney - David Cameron’s constituency. Cameron actually went to Naomi’s wedding.

Before working for Google, Gummer worked for former culture secretary Lord Hunt.

So that’s how modern Google is - it has appointed the daughter of a Tory lord as one of its lobbyists. How very disruptively digital.

Google ran a similar operation at the Labour conference, where the meeting was run by a former Blair adviser, Theo Bertram.

He insisted on wearing twerpish Google Glasses throughout that meeting. Gummer had a pair as well, but thankfully didn’t wear them.

Gummer did say how it was important for the government to organise better computer teaching in schools to keep the internet economy going. Fair point.

But none of the Tory delegates stumbled on the fairer point - that if Google paid fairer taxes, there would be more cash available to make that happen.

Such simple logic eludes Tories, no matter how early they get up in the morning. They’d rather listen to fairy stories about how the NHS is over because a mobile phone told us it wasn’t any good.

Energy Minister Michael Fallon lobbies for his sponsors

Tory Energy Minister Michael Fallon denounced Ed Miliband’s attempt to rein in the energy firms at a late-night party for Conservative Party delegates, organised and paid for by Energy UK.

Energy UK, the corporate lobbyist for the “big six” power firms, gave hundreds of delegates free wine and canapes at Monday night’s bash in a ballroom in the Midland Hotel, which sat inside the conference security zone.

Fallon was guest of honour at the Tory Party party, which was paid for out of energy firms’ profits.

He used the event to condemn what he called “Labour’s ill-thought-out and irresponsible price-fixing” proposal which, he said, “will hold down the investment we need.”

Standing on a low platform alongside Energy UK’s chief lobbyist - former Tory MP Angela Knight - in front of an Energy UK propaganda display, Fallon took the companies’ side, saying the Conservative Party “understands markets and understands companies need to make a return.”

Fallon was full of admiration for the energy firms’ corporate lobbying, describing Energy UK as “one of the strongest, most vociferous and well-organised lobbies there are, and all the better for it.”

Fallon proposed the Tories’ preferred solutions to high energy prices. Rather than regulate prices, Fallon said they hoped to introduce more competition into the market and to hold down “green” subsidies and levies.

Fallon told the delegates: “We’re green, I’m a green, but a cheap green” and said the government must make sure “greenery does not run away with us.”

Knight, who’s new in the post of Energy UK’s chief executive, tried a less aggressive line, accepting that from the power firms’ viewpoint “we know we haven’t got it right.”

But she made the same argument that energy firms should be free to charge what prices they liked.

She told delegates: “I do accept sometimes we are not popular when people get their bill. We don’t pretend we’re perfect. We just hope for a stable environment” - arguing that Miliband’s proposed price freeze threatened that investment stability.

Knight was clearly completely at home at the Tory conference, laughing and joking with delegates and the Energy Minister.

This is partly because of her background as a Tory MP and partly because she had attended many Tory conferences and meetings with ministers in her former job.

Knight was formerly head of the British Bankers Association, the very powerful banking lobby group.

She was finally forced out of the bankers’ group when she backed a BBA court case to try to stop consumers getting compensation for mis-sold PPI insurance. This was a move that even bankers thought was too hard-nosed.

Knight fought consumers too aggressively for the bankers but has been welcomed with open arms by both the big six energy firms and the Tories.