Reid defends plans for patient choice

Health Secretary John Reid today made a staunch defence of giving NHS patients more choice, despite a report which shows his plans are well behind schedule.

The National Audit Office (NAO) today concludes that computer problems had undermined a government scheme to allow people to select which hospital should treat them.

Ministers want to use a new electronic booking system for GPs to give everyone a choice of four or five hospitals by the end of this year.

But the NAO found that progress towards the target was "abysmal" - only 63 appointments had been made by the end of last month compared with the 205,000 planned.

Dr Reid admits that the target is a "challenge" but welcomed the NAO report because he said it also revealed that greater choice, when it worked, would deliver huge benefits to patients. To further boost choice, the Department of Health plans to force health authorities to use the private sector for at least 10 per cent of their treatments.

In a speech to a think tank, Dr Reid was saying that the poorest in society were fed up with only the rich being able to use their "pointy elbows and wallets" to get better treatment.

Government sources suggested that criticism of the plans for the NHS proved that the scheme was on the side of the patient rather than the "producer interests" of health authorities.

Chancellor Gordon Brown has warned that use of the private sector in state-funded healthcare should be strictly limited and only used to plug gaps in capacity. But Dr Reid was telling a conference today that he would not back off Tony Blair's plans to extend as much choice as possible.

He said: "The evidence is that lower socio-economic groups want more choice just as much as middle-class voters. It is the lower groups who have suffered most disadvantages."