Following the proclamation of “six new rights for every NHS patient” this morning, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Gordon Brown was announcing a radical new policy for the health service.

Unfortunately, the promises made today are not really “new” and not really “rights” either, by any proper legal definition of the word.

Rather, the “personal entitlements” announced by the Government represent standards of NHS care that patients across the country should already be receiving — including hospital treatment within 18 weeks of referral by a GP, access to NHS dental treatment or an appointment within two weeks if you are suspected of having cancer.

They are a restatement of the national targets or aspirations that Labour imposed on the health service more than a decade ago. The pledge that all cancer patients should be able to see a specialist within two weeks of initial referral, for example, was first made in a White Paper in 1998.

Other promises do not add much to the list of rights and pledges that appeared in the NHS Constitution last year.

Until recently, ministers were unreservedly proud of the targets, citing their ability to raise standards and slash waiting times from a delay of months to a matter of weeks.

With the problem of waiting lists largely addressed, Andy Burnham the Health Secretary, now concedes that the policy has become a “millstone” that need to be lifted.

Medical leaders had been saying this for years, claiming that the targets were inflexible and could result in perverse effects — patients being moved around a hospital unnecessarily just to meet the four-hour deadline for A&E waits, for example.

Mr Burnham claims that the best elements of the targets system will now become “permanent service standards” to entrench the progress made in recent years.

He proposes some extra threats and incentives for NHS managers to not let standards slip — such as local primary care trusts being required to pay for private consultations if NHS hospitals cannot meet the timescale required.

A burden of data collection, form-filling and box-ticking is also to be abolished, while doctors are to be given control of their own budgets as more decisions are devolved to local health authorities; ideas that echo Lord Darzi of Denham’s review of the health service last year.

The Building Britain’s Future policy document does indicate some forthcoming plans, such as a strategy to focus on the prevention of illness and support for patients to be treated at home, where possible.

But largely these changes are a matter of semantics, not substance. Patients may have the “right” to expect treatment at any hospital, clinic or dentist in England but most will still prefer to go to the nearest one, as a matter of convenience.

Meanwhile, health managers are already tightening their belts and bracing themselves for the prediction of reduced healthcare spending after 2011, with the pressure of having “to do more with less”.

As one doctor remarked as the British Medical Association met for its annual conference in Liverpool today, “targets were the toilet cleaner designed to solve a problem, the personal entitlements are merely the polish”.

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