Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, the head of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), cited treatments ranging from new life-saving drugs to free food for the elderly in nursing homes as examples of care that could suffer if ministers slowed the rate of spending, as expected.

Other services that could be cut included the provision of gluten-free food for sufferers of coeliac disease, and antibiotics for children with sore throats or earache.

Describing the funding emergency as the “elephant in the room” for politicians, Professor Rawlins said that most accepted privately that a failure to continue to increase spending would have a direct impact on patient care. The achievement of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in bringing the share of national income spent on health up to 9.3 per cent, in line with the European average, would not be enough, he told The Times in an interview. “I don’t think we can keep it at 9.3 per cent. It’s going to have to increase, unquestionably.”

His comments came as it emerged that at least 13 members of Labour’s ministerial team have campaigned over the past few months against closures of NHS hospitals used by their constituents, including John Reid, the Home Secretary, and Hazel Blears, the Labour chairman. Newly identified protesters include Derek Twigg, the Defence Minister, and Mike O’Brien, the Solicitor-General.

It is widely expected that the rate of increase in health spending, which has averaged more than 6 per cent a year since Labour came to power, is about to slow considerably. It is due to go up by 7.5 per cent next year but in the three-year period thereafter it will fall to much closer to the rate of inflation. The details will be set out in Mr Brown’s spending review this summer.

Within the Department of Health there are rumours, unsubstantiated by the Treasury, of below-inflation increases and severe cuts. Professor Rawlins told The Times: “The rumours are that Mr Brown isn’t going to give Ms [Patricia] Hewitt [the Health Secretary] much more money for healthcare. Well, then I can see some difficulties emerging.”

He said that he had already been looking at ways of saving money by reducing services, but added that new technologies would emerge that patients would want and “reasonably expect”, but which the NHS would not be able to afford as an ageing population made them increasingly costly.

The Government faced a public outcry after several drugs, such as Herceptin, a breakthrough cancer treatment shown to improve survival rates, were initially denied to some patients on cost grounds.

The Treasury said last night that spending on health was now 90 per cent higher in real terms than it had been in 1997. “Overall UK health spending has gone up as a proportion of GDP from 6.8 per cent to over 9 per cent, around the European average.”

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said: “Every health service across the developed world needs to reconcile the competing demands on its budget, including rising public expectations, ageing populations and advancing medical technology. We have witnessed significant increases in the NHS budget in recent years.” But he added: “Costly centralised initiatives and ministerial incompetence have meant that many of these extra resources have simply been wasted.”

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating