Dobson: co-operation is making a "comeback"

Government to Launch "Health Action Zones"

A small number of experimental pilot projects would develop health strategies involving GPs, hospital trusts and health authorities as well as community groups, voluntary organisations, and business.

Speaking at the annual conference of the NHS Confederation in Brighton, Mr Dobson said, "We have got to get every part of the NHS working together. We simply can't afford some of the wasteful crack-pot competition that the internal market provoked at the outset. I know as a result of the bitter experience of competition, the idea of co-operation is making a comeback."

Arrangements for selecting the health action zone areas will be set out in a White Paper to be published in the autumn. The Department of Health said lessons learned from the scheme "would inform national policy". The programme was to be funded from existing resources. Mr Dobson said "the whole machinery of Government" had to be employed to improve the nation's health.

He said the Government was taking action on a number of fronts, such as tobacco, alcopops, food safety and air pollution. Unemployment, homelessness and poverty were other areas that had an impact on health and needed to be tackled.