Mini-health manifesto to be unveiled

Tuesday, 8 March 2005 12:00 AM

The Prime Minister will pledge today that patients will wait no longer than 18 weeks for an operation on the NHS in a third term of Labour government.

The guarantee will form a central plank in Labour's so-called "mini" health manifesto launched jointly by Tony Blair and Health Secretary John Reid at a press conference in London this morning.

Waiting list times will be brought down by having a quarter of a million additional operations carried out by the private sector, Mr Blair will say.

Mr Blair and Dr Reid will claim Labour is "buying in" treatment from the private sector to reduce waiting times.

One hundred thousands extra doctors and nurses will be recruited and a greater array of NHS hospitals, diagnosis and treatment centres and other charitable and private sector hospitals will come on stream, the leader will say.

Choice for patients in the public services is a central tenet in the forthcoming "unremittingly" New Labour manifesto.

As such, the mini manifesto will outline the so-called patient's pathway, which will offer between four and five hospitals for treatment by the end of 2005, 30 or more by the end of next year and "unlimited" choice over which hospital treats them within three years.

Labour's key health pledge has already been unveiled.

It reads: "Your family treated better and faster - no one waiting more than 18 weeks, guaranteed, for hospital treatment - with choice over where and when - in an NHS free at the point of need."

Mr Blair will also attack the Conservatives' "patients' passport" scheme, claiming it will inexorably extract more than £1 billion out of the NHS budget through subsidising private treatment.

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