IDS reveals his NHS vision

Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith is today putting his vision for a privatised NHS at the heart of his plans to revive his party.

He is setting out his goals of improving public services and reducing the role of the state in a speech in Birmingham.

In an interview ahead of the speech, he also suggested Lady Thatcher would be sidelined in future Tory election campaigns, adding: "My children don't remember her at all".

He said public services had now replaced the economy as the key issue for voters, and claimed the Tories could cash in on Labour's failure to deliver. The speech underlines the sharp shift in Conservative thinking since William Hague led the party with an emphasis on law and order, clamping down on asylum seekers and opposing British entry to the euro.

Mr Duncan Smith is studying the idea of a network of competing private hospitals providing care to NHS patients. He believes creating such a system is the first priority, before consideration of how it would be funded.