CONSERVATIVE MPs in Plymouth maintain the NHS bill is "crucial" for improving healthcare.

But Labour MP Alison Seabeck said it is "deeply worrying" the Coalition is "ploughing on regardless" of opposition.

Gary Streeter, Conservative MP for South West Devon, stressed the NHS will remain free for patients under the reforms.

"I think the new structures introduced by the bill are now crucial to reforming the NHS and making it fit for purpose for the 21st century," he said. "It is not being privatised, it is being improved. That's what we are trying to do and the sooner the better."

He supported decisions being taken by "clinicians rather than administrators", increased competition and greater emphasis on hospitals being more independent.

"I think competition is nearly always healthy," he said. "We've had competition in the health service for years under governments of all colour. I see expansion of that as a positive thing which will mean better services and lower prices."

Tory MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport Oliver Colvile also backed the reforms.

He said he believes "the Government is doing the right thing".

He said: "At the end of the day this is about delivering quality healthcare to the patients."

Mr Colvile distanced himself from a report by an All Party Parliamentary Group, Primary Care and Public Health, which listed him among its 28 members.

The paper, published this month, concluded that the NHS did not need a wholesale restructuring.

It stated: "We were also concerned at the cost of the reforms, £2-3billion (Kieran Walshe, professor of health policy at Manchester Business School) in light of the Government wanting the NHS to save £20billion by 2015.

"However, with much of the reorganisation underway despite the health and social care bill still being debated, our recommendations are to minimise the disruption to NHS patients and we hope that what emerges from the reforms helps deliver a more efficient, patient centred NHS that is sustainable long into the future."

Mr Colvile said he "wasn't heavily involved" in the report.

Ms Seabeck, for Plymouth Moor View, said: "The bill is turning the NHS in to a full-blown commercial market and I have worries about that and genuinely think the bill should be dropped.

"It is a reorganisation at a time the economy is in crisis. Despite the opinions of unions, royal colleges, clinicians, nurses, midwives, they are ploughing on regardless. It is deeply worrying."

Responding to deepening criticism this week, a Department of Health spokesman said the reforms are based on what NHS staff have consistently said – "they want more freedom from day-to-day bureaucracy and political interference so they can get on with the job of caring for patients".