An accounting rule that has plunged more than two dozen hospital trusts into an irrecoverable financial position is to be ditched, Patricia Hewitt, the health secretary, is to announce today.

Now "absolutely confident" that the National Health Service would record a small surplus at the end of this financial year, Ms Hewitt said it could now use part of the £450m contingency reserve that strategic health authorities had built up to find the £179m needed to end a rule that the health department had long ac-cepted was "unsustainable".