Reforms are vital to save NHS, insists Cameron

The Prime Minister stressed again there would be “substantive changes” to landmark reforms planned by Ministers but maintained modernisation was crucial to “save” the NHS from the soaring costs of care.

The speech to hospital staff in London was the latest by Mr Cameron in efforts to win support for reforms which give GPs control of £80bn in NHS spending.

The plans have caused a storm of opposition amid signs the Lib Dems want wholesale revisions to the coalition’s Health Bill.

Details of the changes will be revealed next month following a listening exercise by Ministers but the delays are prompting growing concerns of instability in the NHS, which must also find £20bn in savings by 2015.

Mr Cameron said: “There’s only one option we’ve got, and that is to change and modernise the NHS, to make it more efficient and more effective, and above all, more focused on prevention, on health, not just sickness.

“We save the NHS by changing it. We risk its long-term future by resisting change now.”

He claimed the NHS would remain “much like what we have today”, adding: “Let me be clear – there will be no privatisation, there will be no cherry-picking from private providers, there will be no new upfront costs people have to pay to get care. These are red lines we will not cross.”

British Medical Association chairman Hamish Meldrum said: “We agree with the Prime Minister that the NHS needs to change. T here needs to be greater integration, greater efficiency, and more emphasis on prevention. However, the Health Bill as it is currently written would make these improvements far harder to achieve, leading to a more fragmented health service, with many hospitals at risk of closure.”

Mike Farrar, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation which represents NHS trusts, said greater clarity on how the reforms would work was urgently needed “if we are to have confidence that the reforms will achieve their aims”.

“Learning to do more with less is going to be tough and our health service faces its most challenging period ever in the years ahead. NHS staff have to rise to the challenge of implementing these reforms while achieving large-scale efficiency savings. The Government must get these reforms right. If they don’t, patients will be the losers,” he said.