NHS paying £100m too much for private ops

Taxpayers have been charged at well above NHS rates for operations in private hospitals, figures are set to show today.

The overpayment may be costing the Treasury as much as £100million a year. It will stop from 2008 when fixed prices will be paid for the treatment of NHS patients, whether in state or private hospitals.

Ministers claim that with fixed prices, competition will be on quality rather than cost.

A table of charges for common procedures, to be released by the health department today, will show that it costs 40 to 50 per cent more to send a patient to an independent hospital.

About 80,000 NHS patients a year go to private hospitals. Ministers have highlighted the trend, which has helped to cut waiting lists, although critics say it signals a return to the Tory "internal market" which Labour claimed it had abolished.

Today's figures will suggest that taxpayers would get better value if the NHS was expanded so it could perform the operations itself.