Doctors, nurses and other healthworkers are expected to stage a protest outside The Royal London Hospital to raise concerns about the NHS.

They will be joined by members of the public outside the hospital in Whitechapel at 5pm today.

The protest is organised jointly by Tower Hamlets Keep Our NHS Public, Newham Save our NHS and We are Waltham Forest Save Our NHS, to demand that Barts Health, the Department of Health and the Government protect NHS services. defend NHS workers and cancel the Private Finance Initiative.

A spokeswoman for the campaign said, Bart’s Health Trust which now covers most of east London, including Barts, the Royal London, Newham General, Whipps Cross, the London Chest and Mile End Hospitals, as well as Tower Hamlets community health services, is losing about £2 million a week and services and staff are under threat from the plans for ‘financial recovery’.

She said Government cuts of £20 billion are being pushed through the NHS, labelled as ‘efficiency savings’, when services are already over stretched. Bart’s Health has to pay £129 million this year to the Private Finance Initiative consortium for the new Royal London Hospital alone, payments which over time will amount to many times the true cost.