£200m injected into NHS ahead of crucial vote

The health secretary is to inject £200 million into under-performing hospitals and in so doing sweeten the pill of the government's foundation trust proposals for backbenchers and health professionals.

The cash boost, announced one day before the Health and Social Care Bill is debated in the Commons, is targeted at NHS hospitals and Primary Care Trusts with zero, one or two stars in the NHS performance ratings. Health Secretary Alan Milburn said that the funding was part of an overall improvement programme to pave the way for establishing foundation trusts.

Mr Milburn also said that the government anticipates that all NHS hospitals will be in a position to achieve foundation status within four or five years.

However, Labour MPs, Tory opposition and unions have spoken out against the trust proposals.

A number of backbenchers are expected to rebel when the bill comes to the vote, with estimates as high as 130 MPs - the same mark that registered their disapproval of the government's stance on Iraq. The government will not want two record backbench rebellions either side of a relatively poor showing in the local elections.

The health union Unison has published its own rebuttal of the policy, listing its seven reasons why the government is misguided. Chiefly, the union believes that the move opens a backdoor route for privatisation of the health service and will lead to greater inequalities in standards of care provision.

The Conservative Party, which has championed foundation trusts in the past, however, has simply dismissed the government's bill as a "dog's breakfast".

However, ahead of the crucial vote Mr Milburn reiterated the government's line that foundation hospitals would have more freedom from Whitehall and eventually become solely accountable to the public in the trust localities.

He said: "This is a policy for all and not just for some. It is not about elitism or two-tierism. It is about levelling up not levelling down. It is about raising standards in every hospital so that no NHS hospital is left behind."

Prime Minister Tony Blair has also warned that moving away from public service reform would be a "collective mistake of absolutely historic proportions".

(GMcG)