Health: Tory pledge to save NHS frontline roles

Shadow Health Secretary Andrew Lansley, on a tour of North Yorkshire and Leeds yesterday, claimed the savings were achievable and would be reinvested in services.

He pledged to increase NHS funding by 2.5 per cent a year in the three years from 2011-12, saying this would mean increases in "real terms" for health services although he accepted underlying costs in the NHS rose by three per cent each year.

Mr Lansley said more cash would be switched to areas where there were more elderly people and those with higher health needs in deprived places.

Those with fewer older people and better-off populations would lose out.

Cash would be saved by a public sector pay freeze in 2011-12 and

cutting NHS bureaucracy by a third, releasing 1.5bn. The bulk would come through better NHS productivity, with health services given financial incentives to improve performance.

He said NHS managers had misinterpreted the need for savings as meaning cuts in services.

"It's about doing the same things but doing it more efficiently so it doesn't cost as much – that is not just cutting the budget," he said.

He said political targets would be scrapped and replaced by targets measuring outcomes.

He also aimed a swipe at Liberal Democrat plans to scrap the

controversial NHS IT project which he claimed made no sense. The

Conservatives would allow local solutions to IT issues.