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Anon 1.42 you have just encapsulated the reason why this debate continues to make headlines, in your response. Everybody is confusing Competition with Procurement when in fact they are separate issues.
Competition is about having more than one provider for the same service as in the case of AQP. It will be for commissioners to decide if this is appropriate.
Procurement is about whether to tender (or advertise) a service and this can apply to single or multiple contracts. There are EU procurement laws and the recently publicised NHS procurement regulations are designed to make sure we comply with that, so calls to abolish them would leave commissioners more exposed to the judicial process. Commissioners will need to have very robust decision frameworks to justify any decisions around procurement tendering, but this is not the same as competition.