Rachael Maskell, Unite national officer for health, calls the reforms a "cocktail of confusion" and calls on MPs to battle on against the bill:

"Monitor will be promoting choice, competition and collaboration – all of which are contradictory aims. And now European law has been thrown into this cocktail of confusion."

"At present, the private healthcare firms have a toehold of about five per cent of the NHS – but these companies and their slick lawyers will use EU law to gain a headlock on the NHS."

"Conservative ministers are anxious to allow the private sector to take over the NHS, despite their party's long-running and deep antipathy to Brussels. Now they are prepared to give the green light to EU competition law to shape and carve up UK healthcare."

"It will be a fight to stop this domination by EU law before it assaults the unique character of our NHS. But once EU law is rampant, it will not be long before local care decisions are made in far-off boardrooms. The idea that your GP will be in charge is a fairy tale."

"The rich irony of this is that the right-wing Tories, supporting health secretary Andrew Lansley's NHS privatisation, hate Brussels; while the pro-European Liberal Democrats will find the NHS privatised – and destroyed – by the very European ideal that they have devoted their political lives to."

"The battle to save a universal, joined-up NHS, where the patient, not profit, is the guiding principle is not lost and we urge MPs to redouble their scrutiny of the legislation, when the bill's progress resumes through parliament."