If the NHS was as effective in saving lives as the average European health service, 17,157 fewer people would die in Britain every year.

A new statistical analysis suggests that the NHS is still lagging behind other health systems and that the boost in funds provided under Labour has made no difference.

The analysis, by the Taxpayers’ Alliance, looks at “mortality amenable to healthcare” - that is, deaths that could plausibly be averted by better delivery of healthcare.

Data from the UK and four other countries over 24 years, gathered by the World Health Organisation (WHO), was filtered to extract those conditions and age groups amenable to better medicine. The results for Britain were then compared with those for the other countries - Spain, France, the Netherlands and Germany.

The report, written by Matthew Sinclair, finds that mortality from these conditions is 26.9 per cent higher in the UK than the average in the four European countries, and 48.6 per cent higher than in France, the best-performing country.

Over time, the gap between the UK and the European average has been narrowing, at a steady rate. But the increased funding provided by Labour had not affected the rate by which the UK is catching up by 2004, the latest years for which the WHO data is available.

“Steady improvements in mortality rates, relative to European peers, have been made at almost exactly the same rate throughout the Thatcher, Major and Blair Governments despite huge increases in spending from 1999 to date,” the report concludes.

“There can no longer be any doubt that the Government’s extra NHS spending has completely failed to deliver results.”

Mr Sinclair, a policy analyst at the alliance, said: “Thousands are dying every year thanks to Britain’s health service not delivering the standards people expect and receive in other European countries.

“Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernable difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality.

“This is a colossal waste of lives and money. We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don’t suffer from political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation.”

Karol Sikora, a leading cancer specialist, who writes a foreword to the report, said: “The NHS should not be a religion, with its structure set in tablets of stone.

“We face a choice between a modern, consumer-driven service for all or a decaying, bureaucratic system which only those with their own resources manage to escape.

“Politicians need to read this report carefully and determine the optimal strategy they can put to a well-informed public. Those that capture the best way forward will carry the British voter with them.”

Andrew Lansley, the Conservative Shadow Health Secretary, said: “The whole point of increasing expenditure in the NHS to the European average by 2008 was to deliver the kind of healthcare that our European neighbours already enjoy.

“Millions of taxpayers’ money has been spent but real success on a European level has not been achieved. This international comparison shows the extent of Labour’s failure to deliver the many promises made to patients in the UK.”

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