UP TO one million NHS operations a year will be carried out by private companies by 2008, as part of a radical expansion of independent health provision in Labour’s five-year plan.

Under the plan, announced yesterday by John Reid, the Health Secretary, the private sector will provide up to 15 per cent of all operations and an increasing number of scans and other diagnostic procedures to NHS patients.

Of the 6.4 million operations performed yearly, just 250,000, less than 5 per cent, are done privately.

Outlining the plans to MPs in the Commons yesterday, Mr Reid said that expanding healthcare provision in Britain was crucial to allowing patients a proper choice of services. He said that within four years every patient would be able to choose to be treated at any facility in England.

Under the new plans, failing hospitals that are shunned by the public face outside appraisals and possible closure if standards are not improved. “Under this Government, NHS care will continue to be provided according to need and not according ability to pay,” he told Parliament. “No one will suffer disadvantages through lack of means.”

As well as detailing a bigger role for the private sector, the ambitious Labour plans promise a more personalised NHS with shorter waits.

Mr Reid revealed a new way of measuring waiting times, pledging to tackle “hidden waits” by setting targets from the referral from GP to the operating theatre door. At the moment waiting times are measured from final diagnosis to treatment, which represents only a third of the total patient journey. Mr Reid told MPs that the maximum wait was nine months, and by next year would be six months.

Patients would be able to choose from four or five hospitals and clinics by the end of next year, he said, adding that this would extend to every health provider in the country by 2008.

Plans unveiled by the Conservatives on Wednesday also promised to give patients a choice of hospital around the country, as well as paying 50 per cent of the cost of treatment in private hospitals when it exceeded the NHS tariff.

In a swipe at the Tory plans, Mr Reid told MPs that the annual NHS budget, due to reach £90 billion by 2008, would be working for everyone. “I can confirm that all of this will be directed towards increasing capacity for everyone,” he said. “I can confirm that none of it will be diverted as a subsidy for the relatively well-off few.”

Mr Reid said the White Paper on public health, to be published in the autumn, would set out in more detail plans to tackle major causes of ill-health including smoking, obesity and sexually transmitted diseases.

Yesterday's plans set targets to cut death rates from coronary heart disease and strokes in those under 75 by at least 40 per cent by 2010, compared with 1997. Ministers aim to cut death rates from cancer in those under 75 by 20 per cent by 2010, and suicides also by 20 per cent. They also pledged “significant reductions” in the MRSA superbug between now and 2010.

Andrew Lansley, the Shadow Health Secretary, said Mr Reid had “reiterated Labour's pig-headed belief that setting a target is the same as getting things done".

“Labour's message on waiting lists is not ambitious, it is an admission of defeat,” he said. “The choice is clear. The Conservative ambition is to end NHS waiting lists entirely. Under Labour, patients would be left to wait.”

Karen Jennings, head of health at Unison, the largest health union, said that the Government should be building up capacity in the NHS rather than developing the private sector. “People don't want to surf the internet to find the hospital with the shortest waiting list or the best facilities. Unison's choice and the people's choice would be decent local hospitals, shorter waiting times and comprehensive community services,” she said.

MAIN POINTS

Under Labour’s five-year plan, NHS spending will rise to £90 billion by 2008 to fulfil these pledges:

• Waits for treatment cut to 18 weeks from date of referral by GP
• Patients will be able to choose from four to five providers for planned hospital care by December 2005
• By 2008, the choice of provider will be extended to any facility in England
• Patients will see a primary care practitioner within 24 hours
• Expert patients programme expanded nationally

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