The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Alan Milburn) is to draft in a team of outside professionals to improve efficiency in the National Health Service, Whitehall officials have confirmed (our Lobby correspondent writes).
Their aim will be to deliver on the Prime Minister's pledge to match average European Union spending levels on direct health care by 2006 without imposing an extra burden on the Treasury.
A team of leading members of think-tanks, universities and the private sector have agreed to form a special unit within the Department of Health. They include Professor Christopher Hain (professor of health policy, Birmingham university), Mr Richard Murray (a health economist for the McKinsey consultancy) and Mr John van Reenan (a labour market economist).
Their remit will include reshaping the 900,000 strong NHS labour force, identifying a new strategy that brings efficiency savings to the fore, and releasing the NHS from the "bureaucratic stranglehold" of civil servants.
In addition, Mr Milburn has confirmed that 15 medical practitioners, senior nurses and NHS managers are to join a new management board following the resignation of the NHS chief executive (Sir Alan Langlands).