In the first purchase of its kind for the health service, the British government yesterday announced it had bought a private hospital and would transfer it to the public sector.
However, several unions expressed concern that private patients would still be treated at the hospital and the health service would operate a "two-tier" wage system.
Stressing that the £27.5 million price tag for the Heart Hospital in London was a good deal for the government and the health service, the Health Minister, Ms Hazel Blears, said the hospital would be used as a new cardiac centre, significantly increasing capacity for heart surgery.
"This unprecedented deal means that the Heart Hospital will become a world-class NHS hospital and its staff will become NHS employees," Ms Blears said.
The Department of Health has estimated that the new facility will be able to carry out an extra 200 operations a year when it joins the University College London Hospitals (UCLH) trust in September.
The hospital's private owners bought the facility from the National Health Service in 1991 but the financial return did not match predictions and for the first time in the NHS's history, 162 staff and 18 intensive care units from the private hospital will transfer back to the public sector.
The British Medical Association praised the government's "pragmatic" approach, insisting mixed provision in the NHS was the way forward.
But Mr Geoff Martin, London convenor of the public sector union Unison, said the new hospital would not be dedicated to NHS patients and former private sector nurses would be paid better than staff at other hospitals.
"This is a rescue operation which nails the lie that the private sector is better at running public services," Mr Martin said.
The GMB union said the hospital purchase was evidence that privatisation "is now reaching levels of farce". Mr Robert Naylor, chief executive of UCLH trust, defended pay scales at the hospital saying employment law meant private sector workers transferring to the health service guaranteed their salaries. He also insisted that in clinical terms private patients would not be treated differently from NHS patients.
In a separate development, Essex Police and the Health and Safety Executive started an investigation into two incidents in which plastic oxygen pipes became blocked before hospital operations.
Nine-year-old Tony Clowes died on July 18th when his oxygen pipe became blocked and a 40-year-old patient at another Essex hospital was involved in a similar incident but suffered no long-term ill effects.
The shadow foreign secretary, Mr Francis Maude, meanwhile, admitted an ICM poll predicting June's election defeat for the Tories would have been worse if more voters had turned out, made "gloomy" reading.
Polling among 1,000 people who did not vote in the election found 53 per cent would have voted Labour, but only 19 per cent would have voted for the Tories.
The poll also suggested that on such figures, the government's 167 majority could have passed the 200 mark and the Tories could have lost about 25 marginal seats.