The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Alan Milburn) has claimed that a modernised National Health Service must streamline procedures to ensure that patients get the best medicines available (our Lobby correspondent writes).
In the June 19 issue of Westminster's House Magazine, Mr Milburn set out the thinking behind the national plan for the NHS, which is due to be published next month. He said that a reinvented NHS would stick to its founding principles, but would be unrecognisable from its birth in 1948. It would be based on new practices - "a health service transformed, providing information, care and treatment in new ways, basing its services around the needs and preferences of patients, rather than around the needs and preferences of the providers."
In the same issue of the magazine, the Conservative health spokesman (Dr Liam Fox) said that economics imposed hard truths on health care. "We live in a world where medical science can provide new treatments at an exponential rate, yet our ability to pay for these increases much more slowly. We must make choices. Whether we call it setting priorities or rationing, and regardless of which Government is in power, we will increasingly have to decide what we want from our health care system and target our resources accordingly."
The Liberal Democrat health spokesman (Mr Nick Harvey) called for an NHS constitution which stressed preventative health care. He wanted direct lines of accountability that run straight to the Secretary of State for Health from health authorities and trusts.