A University of Sussex professor has attacked Labour plans for the private sector to take a greater role in running the NHS.

Professor Richard Wilkinson was among eight health experts who accused Labour of paving the way for "large scale privatisation" in an open letter.

Tony Blair has hinted that private firms could be allowed to manage more of the public sector in sweeping reforms that could see billions pumped into services.

Labour has angered trade unions and the left by its willingness to embrace the private sector, including the issue of private management in the health service.

Prof Wilkinson, a professor of social epidemiology, said: "We already have charges for prescriptions and we can easily imagine charges creeping in for seeing a GP and paying for what they call the hoteling costs in a hospital, while they say the treatment is free."

The experts said health services suffered when the major goal was private profit.

They also attacked the Private Finance Initiative (PFI), the system used to let companies meet the cost of building new hospitals, saying money intended for patients was being channelled into the "coffers of business".

The first wave of PFI hospital schemes showed reductions in NHS beds of 30 per cent and cuts in staff budgets of up to 20 per cent, the letter said.

Prof Wilkinson said: "The private sector gets interested in the bits that are profitable and it leaves the health service with those who are the highest risk.

"You can only have a National Health Service if the good and the bad risks are all using it, as soon as you have a system that only caters for the bad risks, like the poor, then these things break down."

Labour denies the accusations. Health secretary Alan Milburn said there were three core principles that would not be crossed.

He said firstly private hospitals would only be used if there was value for money and health benefit for patients; secondly, private sector managers would only manage what they have experience of; and thirdly, there would be no "mixed economy" in healthcare.

Ivor Caplin, defending Hove for Labour, said it was "fundamentally untrue" Labour planned to end free healthcare or create a two-tier system.

He said PFI was an effective use of resources, responsible for 35 new hospitals in the past four years, which continued to be the responsibility of the NHS and provide free treatment.

May 31, 2001