Local government could be given greater control of the National Health Service, despite pledges from Alan Johnson, the new health secretary, that the NHS would face no further structural upheavals "for the foreseeable future".
The suggestion of a bigger role for councils, or for local democracy, in the health service has now come from three senior ministers within a week. Jack Straw, the justice minister, who is in charge of constitutional reform, declared at the weekend: "Too much power has been handed over to unelected health service quangos and many others."
