John Reid, the health secretary, revealed plans yesterday for charities to take over a large slice of healthcare and social services that were previously run by the state.
He said the private sector was poised to perform 15% of operations on NHS patients by 2008. But the government believes voluntary organisations may be better placed than private companies or public bodies to carry out other work, particularly specialised services for the sick and needy.
The first moves to contract out more work to charities will be included in the public health white paper next week. It will argue that voluntary groups with close community links are more likely than state officials to persuade people to adopt healthy lifestyles.
As an example of this approach, it will praise the work done by imams at 60 mosques in north London to persuade Muslims to give up smoking during Ramadan. The initiative was regarded as particularly helpful in a community with above average heart disease and smoking-related deaths.
Mr Reid did not set a target for shifting more work to the voluntary sector, which already provides 40% of secure mental health beds and has pioneered improvements in cancer services.
But he tried to pre-empt criticism from the Labour left and health unions that the policy would undermine the party's traditional public service values.
Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, called in May for expansion of the voluntary sector in health and education, before his return to the Cabinet as Labour's election co-ordinator. This attracted criticism from unions and voluntary groups that feared their independence might by compromised if they came to be regarded as agents of the state.
Mr Reid - delivering the annual Edith Khan lecture in London - sought to cloak the policy in old Labour values by quoting Keir Hardie, one of the party's founding fathers, who said: "Socialism is not help from the outside in the form of state help: it is the people themselves acting through their organisations, regulating their own affairs."
Nye Bevan, the Labour minister who founded the NHS in 1948, thought its centralised control systems should be broken up once the service was established. But the message was forgotten by Labour for 50 years.
Mr Reid said: "To achieve truly people-centred services, we need to change how these services are delivered through a greater range of providers, so that the services themselves are more accurately tailored to the wide diversity of the population they serve." Partnership with the voluntary sector was needed to achieve this.
"The driving force for these organisations is a deeply-rooted identity with specific client groups ... They have each grown out of the needs of marginalised groups and can therefore enable individuals to participate in their local communities by giving voice to their concerns, aspirations and expectations.
"There are those who argue that ... the voluntary and community sector is better placed than the state to deliver services to these groups, or even that they should be the preferred provider of all public services."
He said voluntary organisations were particularly well placed to develop specialist knowledge, understand service users' experiences and spearhead innovation. "In the healthcare context, these characteristsics can help to unlock people's motivation to gain more control over their own health."
Charities could help bridge the gap between hospital and home, explain to people how to manage their own health, interpret the often-daunting messages from medical professionals, provide a listening ear and prevent accidents by helping people assess the risks in their own homes.
"We need to support volunteers better than we do now, rather than nurturing preconceived notions of them as tea-ladies and blue-rinsed fundraisers."
"The government's priority was to build a partnership with voluntary organisations for developing people-centred services," Mr Reid said.
