Now for NHS devolution, says Blair

Tony Blair is today setting out his vision for a reformed and locally run National Health Service.

His speech, to an audience of family doctors and NHS managers, is intended to push forward the Government's drive to modernise public services.

It will also answer critics who claim the Prime Minister has taken his eye off the ball at home while he focuses on diplomacy and the military effort in Afghanistan. Mr Blair will highlight the way in which draft legislation unveiled last week puts 75 per cent of the Government's health spending directly into the hands of doctors and nurses.

He will claim the move is a clear break from the original centralised model set up by NHS founder Nye Bevan, Labour's post-war health secretary. Mr Blair was due to say: "It is time to stop running the NHS as an old-style bureaucracy and start trusting nurses and doctors on the ground.

"Our pride in the 1945 government should not stop this Government taking the bold and necessary next step in health, breaking down the management structures of the NHS and ending the centralised control model that may have worked 50 years ago, but today stands in the way. This is the biggest devolution of power in the history of the NHS."

Mr Blair will deliver his address at a seminar attended by managers and doctors from primary care trusts, the new groupings of GPs' surgeries which have replaced GP fundholders.