TONY BLAIR is to invite retail chains including Tesco, Virgin and Boots to bid to run GP surgeries on behalf of the NHS with contracts worth £225m over five years. GPs will be encouraged to run clinics at breakfast time and in the early evening in poor areas where conventional family doctors have been reluctant to practise.

Blair’s announcement, to be made tomorrow, is intended to ensure Gordon Brown carries on his reforms of the NHS after Blair leaves Downing Street.

The prime minister will respond to Tory claims that he has left the NHS in “crisis” by publishing his ideas for “progressive” reform of public services. He will allow GPs to link up with pharmacies and supermarket drug counters by sharing electronic patient records.

In an indication that he is signed up to the scheme, the chancellor will announce measures to expand the use of “community pharmacies” for routine treatments and tests.

Tomorrow Blair will publish the first of six policy review papers, on public services, in an effort to shift the emphasis away from producers to consumers.

Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, will name the first towns to take part in the new programme. Extra family practices, walk-in centres and minor injuries units will be opened in Har-tlepool, Durham, Mansfield and Great Yarmouth. Other areas will join the programme in the coming months.

Contracts for the new services will run for an initial five years, with the possibility of extension.

Although there is no national shortage of GPs, there are many “underdoctored” areas in England and Wales. The four areas involved in the first wave have significantly fewer GPs per person than the national average of 57.9 GPs per 100,000 people.

The programme aims to attract a broad range of providers, from existing entrepreneurial GPs to social enterprises and FTSE-100 companies. Some extra GPs and nurses will be recruited for up to 30 health blackspots to tackle local shortages of doctors.

David Cameron will also focus on the NHS in a speech to the Conservative party’s spring forum in Nottingham today. He is expected to say: “It used to be said that Labour were the party of the NHS. Not any more. Labour are the party that is undermining the health service.

“There’s a simple reason why. It’s not because they don’t care. But it is because of their values and philosophy: Labour’s mania for controlling and directing things from the centre; Labour’s pessimism about human nature; Labour’s belief that if people aren’t told what to do, they’ll do the wrong thing. Labour just don’t trust people.” nThousands of doctors staged marches in London and Glas-gow yesterday to protest at reforms to the system of medical training.

They accuse the government of trying to “disempower and degrade” the profession.

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