THE York GP leading a campaign against sweeping Government health reforms says the recent listening exercise on the controversial changes was “a shambles”.

Earlier this week, David Cameron announced a Government U-turn on several of its key NHS reforms, following recommendations by a panel of experts.

Dr James Chan, who works at York Hospital, and heads the Save Our NHS York campaign and website, said: “Although we welcome many of the outcomes, it stops short of looking at the hard scientific evidence out there which says that competition doesn’t drive up quality.

“The largest costs to the NHS are not looked at. Medicines and equipment which are run by the private sector are costing us more and more for little benefit for patients.

“This drains away our tax money to big companies who make sickening profits, at the detriment to the rest of the health service.

“This is what private involvement means – greater cost, less benefit, more profits for shareholders while patient services get cut.”

Speaking on Monday, Mr Cameron denied there had been any U-turn, but announced a series of changes to the sweeping reforms.

The Government had wanted to hand over responsibility of spending the millions in NHS funding each year to groups of commissioning GPs, by 2013.

Now, however, a Leeds-based commissioning board will handle the funds until the GP’s are ready to take on the responsibility.

The GP commissioning groups will now also include input from hospital doctors and nurses when it comes to decisions on spending NHS cash.

Another climbdown will see the scrapping of a plan to strip the Health Secretary of legal responsibility for overall performance of the NHS.