A LEADING doctor has warned Lancashire after it emerged that Greater Manchester is to be given full control of health spending.

Chancellor George Osborne said £6bn from the health and social care budget would be devolved to the region’s councils and clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), making Manchester the first region in the country to control such funds.

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The plan is set to come into force from April next year, and will be watched closely by other areas.

The government hopes merging the health and social care budgets will ease pressure on hospitals and help to improve home care services for patients who need it.

But Dr David Wrigley, who represents Lancashire doctors in the British Medical Association, said the changes would lead to increasing fragmentation of services due to a rising use of private firms.

He said: “Councils tend to put services out to tender as they have no ability in house to offer those services. And if this happens, even more than we see now in health, it will lead to further fragmentation and the prospect of more private companies cherry picking contracts in order to boost their profits.”

“This is also yet another reorganisation at a time we are just recovering from the last one imposed on us by the coalition – one which wasted billions of pounds.”

The radical plan will see local leaders, and ultimately Greater Manchester’s new directly elected mayor, control how budgets are allocated.

But Mr Osborne said: “This is what the NHS wants to see as part of its own future.

“And it’s also about giving people in Manchester greater control over their own affairs in that city, which is central to our vision of the ‘northern powerhouse’ – so it’s a very exciting development.”

Richard Humphries, assistant director of the King’s Fund think tank, said that a full transfer of responsibility would be a reform ‘on a breathtaking scale’, but could pose serious risks.

said: “If the plan is to take the money away from CCGs and NHS England and to give it to local government, that, on the range of options to achieve integration, is on the nuclear end of the spectrum and raises all sorts of questions and risks.

“Depending on the detail - and the detail is really crucial and we don’t have that yet - you could either see this as a triumph for local democracy or creating real risks of yet another reorganisation of the NHS when it’s barely recovered from the last one.

“If the plan is to give the money to local government, the words ‘chalice’ and ‘poisoned’ perhaps spring to mind.”