FORMER Bolton West MP Tom Sackville has called for the Government to perform a U-turn on tax relief for private health insurance.

The former Junior Health Minister has said encouraging more people to take out cover is the only way to save the NHS.

Mr Sackville says that the low level of private health care - and private health insurance in Britain - puts unfair pressures on the NHS and that the well-off should be encouraged to provide for themselves.

In the interests of both fairness and encouraging them to do this, the Government should reverse its recent scrapping of tax relief on health insurance, for the retired, and extend it to everyone - especially the well-off young.

He wrote in a national newspaper: "Whatever the short term difficulties, Ministers need to find a way to persuade today's young earners to make provision for their own, and their family's health.

"Such ideas are still political heresy, but so is much of what is currently being proposed for Social Security and Education.

"The Government must get on, and have some good heretical thoughts about health, before it exhausts its supplies of political courage."

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