The NHS Future Forum’s report on choice and competition has argued strongly in favour of allowing charities to deliver more NHS services, as well as giving them the ‘Right to Challenge’.

Choice and Competition: Delivering Real Choice, which was released yesterday, argues in favour of the positive benefit charities can bring to NHS services.

It contains numerous contributions and case studies from charities delivering effective medical services, including WRVS, Marie Curie Cancer Care and the Health Foundation.

The report also cites a policy pamphlet contributed by ten major charities, which it says is “full of examples of coherent pathways created around third sector organisations, often working in partnerships with independent or NHS bodies”.

The ten charities involved in the pamphlet were Age UK, Asthma UK, Breakthrough Breast Cancer, the British Heart Foundation, the British Lung Foundation, Diabetes UK, Macmillan Cancer Support, the Neurological Alliance, Rethink and the Stroke Association.

Right to Challenge

Elsewhere, the report calls for the Localism Bill’s ‘Right to Challenge’ to be extended to the NHS, allowing individuals and organisations who believe they can deliver a service better to request the right to do so.

This would be backed up by a ‘Citizen’s Panel’, which would assess how far choice is being implemented.

However, the report also recommends the removal of NHS regulator Monitor’s proposed duty to promote competition, saying that its duty should instead be to protect the patient.

Bubb: 'Competition is not a disease'

Writing in his blog, the choice and competition group's chair, Sir Stephen Bubb, emphasised that while he had proposed changes to the role of Monitor, he did not recommend a “watering down of the role of competition generally”.

He said: “As I said to the Prime Minister, 'competition is not a disease'. I have seen evidence that competition in the NHS drives up quality and choice.

“We argue that choice is the proper focus and therefore you need a diversity of providers to provide that choice.”

The choice and competition group included charity sector leaders such as Lord Victor Adebowale, chief executive of Turning Point; Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind and Thomas Hughes-Hallett, chief executive of Marie Curie Cancer Care.

The government today indicated that it would accept the majority of the proposals, including the stipulation that competition will not be imposed by a regulator.

The proposals will now return to the committee stage to be scutinised by MPs.