Spending on patient care from outside the NHS has been the fastest-growing component of the health service's expenditure during the past decade and reached £5bn a year in 2006, figures from the Office for National Statistics show.

Spending on care bought from the private and voluntary sectors and local authorities has been rising by 15 per cent a year on average since 1995. That is faster than the rate of NHS growth as a whole. It reached almost 20 per cent a year between 2002 and 2006.