David Cameron will today step up his campaign on the health service by calling for a bill to take politicians out of the day-to-day running of the NHS.

The Conservative leader, who last week declared that the NHS would be his number one priority in government, will claim that he, not the chancellor, Gordon Brown, first floated the idea of greater autonomy for the service.

Mr Cameron will call for cross-party support for his NHS independence bill, which he wants to publish in the new year. "The NHS matters too much to be treated like a political football. Let's work together to improve the NHS for everyone. Let's give the NHS fair funding, and let's give taxpayers better value for money by getting rid of the targets and bureaucracy and pen-pushing that's all about politicians' priorities," he will say to the King's Fund thinktank.

John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, dismissed his claims. "The policy he designed for the last election would have undermined the health service, not strengthened it, with his patients' passports." he told Sunday AM on BBC1.