Boost for private clinics in NHS

CHANCELLOR Gordon Brown is to risk the fury of public sector unions over Budget plans linking health spending to a bigger role for private clinics.

He will use the top-level report into the future of the NHS, drawn up by former NatWest bank chief Derek Wanless, to clear the way for ' fasttrack outplacement units' dealing with non-critical treatment. The units will be paid for by the NHS, but operated by private health providers.

Wanless's report into the funding of the NHS up to 2022 will be published in the 48 hours before the April 17 Budget and will endorse a 'free' NHS funded by taxation.

A source close to the Wanless inquiry said a larger role for private clinics would be a key part of NHS modernisation. 'We are talking about predictable treatments - varicose veins, hernias and so on.

'The focus will be on shifting those out of district general hospitals into private 'fast-track' units, leaving hospitals to deal with priorities - accident and emergency, heart disease, cancer and the like.'

Fast-track treatments will be free but the increased private-sector role will anger unions, not least because of the threat to their membership base - the service accounts for at least one union member in ten.

Already, the Treasury envisages a sharp increase in non-NHS health spending. In 1999/2000, £600 million of health spending was outside the NHS, rising to £1 billion this year, and £2.1 billion in 2003/2004.

Last month, Brown told NHS unions: 'The something-for-nothing days are over in our public services and there can be no blank cheques.' The 'one size fits all' approach to health care was over, he said.

Under reforms that came into effect this month, Health Secretary Alan Milburn devolved half of all NHS spending to local trusts, made up of GPs and nurses, to be spent at hospitals and clinics of their choice.