Thousands of hoax callers to ambulance stations are to face prosecution because of the danger they pose to real patients who suffer when precious resources are diverted, the government will announce today.
Alarmed by the sharp increase in the number of hoax callers, the government will outline guidelines to encourage ambulance stations to ensure that anyone who deliberately raised a false alarm was prosecuted.
The junior health minister, David Lammy, will tell the annual conference of the ambulance service that information about hoax callers will have to be made available to the police and the crown prosecution services.
Hoax callers can be prosecuted under the 1984 Telecommunications Act, but nobody has been prosecuted in the 18 years since it was enacted.
Alan Milburn, the health secretary, said at a lunch for political journalists at Westminster yesterday that ministers had decided to act after a survey of several local authorities showed that 1,000 hoax 999 calls are made to ambulance centres every week. London was a particular problem.
In a wide ranging speech, Mr Milburn also admitted that the national health service was facing its last chance to prove it could deliver the standard of health care Britons wanted.
Describing Gordon Brown's budget as a "profound moment" for Britain and for the provision of healthcare, Mr Milburn said: "What we did with the budget was end a decades-old fallacy - that you could have world class healthcare on the cheap, and the truth is you can't. The job for the national health service and I actually think it is the last chance the NHS has to do this is to prove that with extra resources it can deliver not just improved services, but a different style of service as well."
In his budget in April the chancellor announced that NHS spending would rise from £65bn to £105.6bn by 2007-08, an increase of 43% in real terms.
Mr Milburn also used his speech to warn trade unions that the government would not be dictated to by them.
Speaking after the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, resigned from the RMT union over its decision to cut funding to the Labour party, Mr Milburn called for a "modern, mature" relationship in which Labour "can't and will not act as proxies" for unions.
