Reid: NHS favours middle class

Middle-class patients get a better deal from the NHS than their working-class counterparts, Health Secretary John Reid will admit today.

In his first major speech since Tony Blair promoted him to the job, Dr Reid will describe a two-tier health service in which the goal of "equal access" has yet to be realised.

He will point to examples such as hip replacements, where low-income patients have a 30 per cent greater need yet receive 20per cent fewer operations.

The admission of such a stark class divide, six years into a Labour government, will signal renewed efforts from Whitehall to improve health care in poorer areas. Politically, it will mark an attempt by Dr Reid to win over sceptical Labour MPs before a tough Commons vote on the Government's flagship policy of creating foundation hospitals.

Rebel MPs led by former health secretary Frank Dobson have claimed that the policy, which gives the bestrunhospitals more freedom to run their own affairs, will worsen the twotier nature of the NHS.

Last time the issue came to the Commons, 63 Labour MPs voted against the Government. When it returns next month, the rebel ranks could be swollen by the fallout from Mr Blair's latest reshuffle, bringing the possibility that the Government could be defeated on the issue.

In the text of his speech to an NHS Confederation conference, Dr Reid acknowledges "considerable differential class access to specific services". He harks back to the principles of Aneurin Bevan, who founded the NHS in 1948, and accuses the Tories of dropping Bevan's goal that treatment should be free at the point of need.

Throughout the industrialised world, the rich live longer in better health than the poor. In Britain, average life expectancy in some of the poorest local council areas is as much as 10 years less for men and eight years less for women than in the wealthiest areas.

Dr Reid will deliver his speech in Glasgow, which on some measures is Britain's unhealthiest city.