A major advertising campaign critical of government plans to bring the private sector into the NHS has been shelved by union chiefs.

The poster campaign, which had been organised by the GMB, has been cancelled as a gesture of support to the government because of events in America. The union has also withdrawn a series of highly critical motions from the agenda of Labour's annual party conference in Brighton next month.

Carrying the banner headline "Who would you trust to run the NHS?" the posters feature a Wall Street stockbroker standing next to a nurse. The union said that running the campaign would have been insensitive given the number of brokers who were killed in last Tuesday's outrages.

A GMB spokesman denied the campaign had been shelved because it was unlikely to get coverage in the current climate. "It's not quite as clinical as that. We are all in shock at what has happened and right now it's important to be behind the government. It is not the time to getting into arguments," she said.

The union warned that the campaign was being suspended not abandoned and its opposition to private involvement in the public sector would continue.

"We have not given up the fight and we are not saying that we agree with the government - we still have significant differences," the spokesman said.

Cathy McGlynn, Director of the PPP Forum, a body set up to promote promote the benefits of the initiatives which the GMB is objecting to, told ePolitix.com that debate of the issue had been one-sided.

"We are calling for a rational and measured debate on the subject, to make the whole idea of PPP more accessible to the general public," she said.