The plans for huge use of the private sector, if successful, would effectively end NHS waiting lists for most types of surgery. They are to be announced in the Commons on Thursday by John Reid, the health secretary. He will pledge to reduce the maximum waiting time for an operation to three months by 2008.
To meet these promises, an extra 1m operations are to be performed from 2006 to 2008. About 6.6m operations a year are performed on the NHS and much of the extra workload would be met by massively increasing the proportion commissioned from the private sector. Reid will also announce that every patient will get the right to choose treatment in any hospital in Britain.
The pledge is part of Labour’s strategy of emphasising “choice” in public service. Both main parties are putting choice at the centre of their election strategies.
On Wednesday, Tony Blair will make a keynote speech on choice, announcing a series of five-year plans. Reid’s speech will fill in some of the details.
Sir Nigel Crisp, chief executive of the National Health Service, notes in the leaked documents that the plan would be affordable only if the Department of Health succeeds in driving down prices in the private sector, where operations cost 18% more than work done by the NHS. Crisp reveals that at one point the NHS was paying a 42% premium on every private operation it bought.
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Thousands of private patients will start drifting back to the NHS as waiting times fall, he believes, forcing down private sector prices.
Another new project to be announced by Reid on Thursday is a drive to keep patients out of hospital by making home treatment of chronic diseases such as asthma, diabetes and heart conditions a priority.
Andrew Lansley, the shadow health secretary, will unveil his own health programme on Friday. It will include a version of the previous Tory scheme of “patients’ passports”, in which they would be given vouchers to cover either the full cost of an NHS operation or part of the price of a private one.
A source close to Reid said: “We’ve done the intellectual heavy lifting on this. We’re offering choice for free. The Tories are offering choice for charges.”