Tony Blair will say today that Labour must go on reforming public services to stay in office as he unveils the reports from his last policy review.

These include plans to speed up proposals to allow people waiting for acute operations to go to the hospital of their choice.

He will also announce moves to allow GPs to link up with pharmacies by sharing electronic records.The report of the public services policy group, to be outlined by Mr Blair, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, and Patricia Hewitt, the Health Secretary, will claim that the public services have now so changed that it is the patients and parents who are calling the shots. At present people can choose from four hospitals for operations and the Government had intended people to choose from any provider, public or private, by the end of 2008. That deadline is now to be brought forward and people will be able to go anywhere for hip surgery later this year, with changes for other operations also being made this year.

In a clear message to Mr Brown, his almost certain successor, Mr Blair says in the report foreword that the Government could turn back and eschew further reform or go forward with the mission to “personalise and empower”.

He says Labour must embrace the vision of a Britain “where people are more empowered than today, where they enjoy more opportunity than today, and where services of all kinds are focused ever more on the personal needs of those who use them”.

Friends of Mr Blair admit that his “swansong” has begun, although it became clearer than ever yesterday that he does not intend to leave before June at the earliest. The Prime Minister’s planned big trip to Africa in the second half of May — after local, Scottish and Welsh elections — is widely expected to come after he has announced his resignation.

He is expected to go to Sierra Leone, Mozambique and South Africa, where he will try to ratchet up pressure on the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe, before attending the G8 summit in Germany in June, which could be his last foreign engagement as Prime Minister.

Margaret Beckett yesterday became the latest Cabinet minister to say that Mr Brown should not face a serious challenge. The Foreign Secretary told BBC One’s The Politics Show that the Chancellor was the best person to lead the country and it would be better if he were not distracted by a heavyweight rival. Her intervention follows an appeal by the former Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, for David Miliband, the Environment Secretary, to challenge Mr Brown.

Supporters of Peter Hain’s bid for the deputy leadership announced that 32 MPs had signed up to back him.

Explore Health News

• Swine flu

Times Recommends

• Times Christmas appeal: Letter from the Editor
• Conferences — what a waste of money
• Schools supremo learns a painful lesson