Labour's Shadow Health Secretary has called David Cameron's statement on integrated health and social care "extraordinary".

Responding to a call from David Cameron that health and social care services are to be brought together, Andy Burnham said the statement from the Prime Minister laid bare the confusion at the heart of his Government's health policy.

Cameron told the health secretary, Andrew Lansley, to drive through changes that health policy experts claim will make life more convenient for patients, improve care and save the NHS money.

However, Mr Burnham has slammed the decision saying the PM seemed to be "in ignorance" of the contents of the embattled Health Bill, which removes Ministers' powers to issue top-down orders and breaks the shared boundaries between councils and NHS.

"The irony is that truly integrated care would be a reality more quickly if Mr Cameron wasn't subjecting the NHS to the biggest reorganisation in its history," Mr Burnham said.

He added: "His misguided Bill does nothing to promote integrated care. By moving the NHS from a planned system to a full-blown market, and disrupting the established relationships between the NHS and local government, it will set the cause of integration back by ten years.

"When a key priority for this decade should be a drive towards truly integrated health and social care in the patient's home, the Tory-led Government is hacking away at the very structures that could deliver it.

(DW)