A £100m scheme to quicken the pace of medical innovation in the NHS will be unveiled by ministers today as Gordon Brown prepares to give the health service pride of place in Labour's electoral shop window.
Lord Darzi, the leading cancer surgeon who was made health minister when Mr Brown became prime minister in June, will deliver an interim report on his plans to make NHS services in England more cost-effective and accessible.
Mr Brown last night put him in charge of a new Health Innovation Council which will be set up to accelerate the introduction of hi-tech medical devices, diagnostics and drugs. It will be presented as providing the foundation for "a 21st century NHS providing a world-class service".
Lord Darzi is also likely to give the prime minister a blueprint for improving patients' access to GPs outside normal office hours, but the Department of Health was unwilling to disclose this part of the package last night.
The Tory leader, David Cameron, promised on Saturday to renegotiate the GPs' contract to make them open surgeries during evenings and weekends. Mr Brown knows that Labour needs an alternative answer to the problem, to address one of the voters' main criticisms of the government's stewardship of the NHS.
Lord Darzi's interim report had been due later this month, but publication was advanced as Mr Brown cleared the decks for a possible election announcement. For the same reason, the Treasury's comprehensive spending review will emerge ahead of schedule on Monday. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has been battling to secure an above-inflation settlement for the NHS and for social care for older people.
Lord Darzi will say that delivering the highest quality of care for everyone, as good as or better than any country in the world, must be a fundamental goal of the NHS. To achieve this, staff must be given more influence over how the service is run locally.
He said last night: "I want to see the UK become a world leader in pharmaceutical and medical technology, research and development, so NHS patients have access to the best innovative treatments and services."
Lord Darzi will present his interim report as an "emerging vision" of the future of the NHS. It will be less specific than the blueprint to reshape healthcare in London that he produced for the capital's strategic health authority in July.
The London document included plans to centralise major surgery, maternity and paediatric services in a small number of super-hospitals. It said most routine work should be carried out by GPs and peripatetic hospital consultants in a network of 150 "polyclinics" across the capital. "The days of the district general hospital seeking to provide all services to a high enough standard are over," the London report said.
Lord Darzi's interim national report will be less prescriptive. He is planning to produce reports in the spring on the future of the NHS in the nine English regions outside London. Each region will submit eight reports on the main areas of NHS activity. He has enlisted 72 leading doctors to supervise the work locally.
This timetable would allow Labour to go into an early election claiming it has no plans to close hospital services. Any that emerge next year would be driven by the clinical judgment of local doctors and nurses, not by central political dictat, health ministers will say.
The shadow health secretary, Andrew Lansley, said: "This is hypocrisy gone mad. Bringing forward Lord Darzi's findings so soon is yet another example of this government using our NHS as a political football.
"How can NHS professionals feel confident, and how can patients feel safe, when they know that this report must have been cobbled together without consideration for clinical evidence?"
Niall Dickson, chief executive of the King's Fund, an independent health research institute, said: "An additional investment of up to £100m on innovation in health services must be welcomed. Take-up for new technology has sometimes been patchy across the NHS. But we really need to see further detail of how this proposed innovation council will operate alongside the other organisations currently charged with the assessment and promotion of best practice in the health service. It has not yet been made clear how the creation of yet another central organisation will help."
Karen Jennings, head of health for Unison, the public service union, said: "It will mean a lot to staff in the NHS that Lord Darzi has recognised that they are creative and can be on the cutting edge of innovation given the opportunity. This is a very different message from the mantra that the private sector has the monopoly on creativity."
