TORY leader David Cameron will today make a passionate speech attacking Government plans for NHS reform which he claims will cause GP surgeries in rural areas to join the long list of decline which already includes post offices, primary schools and village pubs.

Cameron is due to give his speech to members of the King’s Fund, a highly regarded independent think tank which annually publishes a list of mortality rates at all English hospitals – an act which already displeases the Department of Health.

In details of the speech published this morning, Cameron will pour withering criticism on Labour plans for large “polyclinics” which would provide not only GP services but nursing and social care under one roof.

Inevitably such clinics would be based in cities and the bigger towns, causing the closure of an estimated 1,700 GP practices, says Tory party research. And most of those would be in smaller market towns and villages.

“Communities which have lost their post office, their local shops and their local police station are now going to lose their doctor,” Cameron believes.