The 17,000 dying a year because the NHS has become a 'vast bureaucratic monolith'

More than 17,000 people are dying every year because the NHS has become a "vast bureaucratic monolith", a report says today.

Although mortality rates have been getting better for the past 25 years, the improvement has actually slowed since Labour injected an extra £34billion into the NHS.

In a foreword to the report by the TaxPayers' Alliance, respected cancer expert Professor Karol Sikora, of Imperial College, said: "Real reform and not more money is the only rational way forward."

He added: "This piece of research comes to the alarming conclusion that despite more than tripling NHS spending over the last decade, we have not increased the pace of improvement in the most important measurement of its output - its ability to save lives.

"On our ability to save lives, on quality of service provision and on access to technology, we still lag far behind Europe which is far less dependent on public sector monopoly."

The report looked at data from the World Health Organisation to estimate the number of deaths that could plausibly have been averted by the NHS since the 1980s.

The measure is known as "mortality amenable to healthcare" and the UK's performance was compared with that of Germany, the Netherlands, France and Spain.

"The report said that if the UK had achieved the same "mortality amenable to healthcare" as the average of the other European countries studied, there would have been 17,157 fewer deaths in 2004 - the most recent year for which data is available.

It also found that improvements in mortality had slowed during the later Blair years, compared to the Thatcher and Major governments - despite huge rises in NHS spending since 1999.

The report said: "In the last three years studied (2002-2004) amenable mortality convergence was slower than the trend over the entire period.

"There can no longer be any doubt that the Government's extra NHS spending has completely failed to deliver results."

It said much of the increased spending had gone on improved pay for doctors.

Professor Sikora said the NHS had become a "vast bureaucratic monolith out of touch with a consumerist, informed and demanding public".

He added: "An enormous amount of tax in Britain goes into paying for the NHS. Over £105billion is being spent this year alone.

"Yet this report clearly shows the huge recent surge in NHS funding has not even caused a blip in the trajectory of amenable mortality."

In a warning to political leaders, Professor Sikora said: "Politicians need to read this report carefully.

"Those that capture the best way forward will carry the British voter with them. The NHS is not a religion set in tablets of stone."

The solution could be a system of social insurance where far less of the cost of healthcare comes from taxpayers and more from private insurance.

Report author Matthew Sinclair said: "Billions of pounds have been thrown at the NHS but the additional spending has made no discernible difference to the long-term pattern of falling mortality.

"We need to learn lessons from European countries with healthcare systems that don't suffer from political management, monopolistic provision and centralisation."

The Taxpayers' Alliance report mirrors a study last year which found that England had one of the lowest cancer survival rates in Europe.