The British Medical Association has called for politics to be taken out of day-to-day management of the health service and for a more explicit means of rationing care, in moves that challenge both Conservative and Labour policy for the NHS.

In what it described as a "green" paper for debate, before concrete proposals later in the year, the BMA said it wanted to move away from the "purchaser/provider" split that was a main element of both government and Conservative policy.