David Cameron will today propose an overhaul of the Government’s administration of the NHS, with the Department of Health’s brief scaled down and day-to-day decisions passed to an independent board.

In a what would be a substantial transfer of power from Whitehall, the Tories have pledged to hand over control of the health service to an independent NHS board as part of their next election manifesto.

In a speech to the NHS Confederation’s annual conference in London today, Mr Cameron will set out four progressive stages of reform, including increasing NHS spending, devolving more power and responsibility to doctors and “setting the health service free from political interference in day-to-day management”.

Once these steps had been taken a Cameron administration would announce the transformation of the Department of Health into the Department of Public Health.

The proposals, set out in more detail in a “white paper” on health yesterday, signal the party’s first concrete policy pledge on the public services.

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said that local health authorities should report directly to the proposed NHS board, which would be accountable to ministers.

He accused the Government of imposing too many national targets that were not based on evidence and said that patients were “disillusioned”.

The Department of Health was sending out five instructions a day on how the NHS should be run, he claimed.

The Conservatives would abolish all such targets, including the Government’s key commitment on waiting lists, in favour of a new focus on outcomes for patients. “Top-down targets – all they do is meet a need for political grandstanding and damage patient care,” he said.

By the end of next year, the Government wants nobody to wait more than 18 weeks from GP referral to treatment. But Mr Lansley said that the target related to the time taken to get a first treatment for a patient, when what should be being measured was the outcome.

“The NHS board which we propose will give a high degree of independence which represents patient and public interests,” he said.

Ministers would appoint board members, set objectives and hold it to account, but it would not be dominated by civil servants or politicians.

Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, has rejected such a plan, saying that the health service is too large an organsation to be run that way.

Hazel Blears, the Labour chairwoman, said that the Conservative idea sounded “like a return to the days of nationalised industries”.

Yesterday’s plan for the NHS was the first of several policy announcements that the party plans in the next few weeks. It promises that the majority of the NHS budget would be given over to doctors to commission the services they needed.

However, a previous Tory plan, for patients to be allowed to use NHS funds as “vouchers” to contribute to private treatments, has been scrapped.

Mr Cameron will admit today that Labour’s commitment to an NHS that is funded by the taxpayer and free for all was a core principle for the NHS that the Conservatives will uphold.

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