Department of Health lawyers reveal the Government's policy framed for treating the NHS as the "preferred provider" of services is illegal, a former Health Minister posted.

Labor’s Lord Warner rebuked the Health Secretary Andy Burnham's decision last year to move away from the policy that "any willing provider" should be considered to deliver services.

The decision ordered a halt in an investigation into the legality of the "preferred provider" approach being initiated by the Co-operation and Competition Panel, which is the department's advisory body on competition.

Crossbench peer Baroness Murphy, a psychiatrist who has chaired various NHS organizations, posted that getting rid of a useful and a successful policy after 10 years as the result of an announcement at the Labor conference looked like a pre-election "sop" to public sector unions.

"The aborting of the whole commissioning process in the east of England is a highly damaging outcome for the provision of services which has resulted from the Secretary of State shooting from the hip at the party conference and giving his support to an NHS monopoly”, Lord Low of Dalton, a fellow crossbencher added.