Government urged to "come clean" on NPfIT negotiations

After six years, only 13 NHS hospitals have basic IT systems in place and over £6bn has been spent." According to shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien

The government has been accused of looking to tie the next government into NPfIT contracts worth billions of pounds, by signing unbreakable ongoing contracts with suppliers before the end of March.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is expected to announce that he is calling the General Election on 6 May, to effectively close down such decisions.

Shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien issued a challenge to ministers to " come clean" about negotiations acknowledged to be under way that are an attempt to secure £600m in savings on the escalating £12.7bn programme.

O'Brien fears this would prevent an incoming Tory government from scrapping the remainder of the project and abandoning the aim of making every English NHS patient's record available at any time anywhere in England.

So far the system has only delivered limited choose-and-book functions for hospital appointments and GP-to-GP digital record transfers.

Health minister Mike O'Brien said during an interview with BBC Radio: "I am not going to get into the situation where, because we are approaching an election, the whole of government stops and we cannot sign contracts with suppliers to procure NHS equipment. That would be nonsense."

But the shadow health minister Stephen O'Brien said: "It is devastating to taxpayers to watch the government sign away billions on a failing IT programme and tie the hands of the next government.

"Labour claims it is making efficiency savings, but cutting the deal with suppliers by as little as £600m does not affect the scale by which they have failed to deliver.

"After six years, only 13 NHS hospitals have basic IT systems in place and over £6bn has been spent.

"When will the government acknowledge that the only viable route forward is to end the monopoly of NHS suppliers and embrace the Conservatives' plan to publish open standards and give local NHS trusts a choice of inter-operable proven IT systems?"

The Tories are saying that the £6bn total to date is an understatement of true cost because it excludes the local costs of implementing IT systems provided through the national programme, forecast to reach at least £3.6bn.