The Government White Paper on the NHS contains far reaching proposals to change the way health services are organised . It includes plans to give GPs control of budgets for mental health, hospital and community care services.

Currently, England’s 152 Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) are the NHS organisations which control almost £80bn of NHS spending in total. PCTs use budgets to commission services from GPs, hospitals and community care organisation for their local area. The plans remove this role from PCTs and instead groups of GPs will commission services.

The White Paper emphasises more choice for patients including the choice of consultant led teams. It is proposed that all hospitals will become Foundation Trusts giving them more freedom.

Responsibility for Public Health would move to Local Authorities. Local Authorities would also convene “Health and Wellbeing Boards”, which will take a strategic approach on health and social care locally.

A new consumer champion called HealthWatch would be created. It is proposed that LINks would become local HealthWatches to support a role for local authorities in promoting choice and complaints advocacy.

4 consultation documents related to the White Paper have been published with a deadline for responses of 11 October 2010.

Go to further details about the consultation on the Deprtment of Health website