A future Tory government will help patients pay for care in the private sector, the shadow health secretary has said.

Speaking to Tory conference, Dr Fox set out plans for the NHS to fund 60 per cent of the cost of an operation if patients opt to go private.

The Tory frontbencher said the plan would deliver more choice and reduce waiting lists in the health service.

Addressing Conservative activists gathered in Blackpool, Fox said that the NHS under Labour was "a system in crisis".

And he said that patients who had paid taxes towards the NHS for years were being forced to pay twice if they opted to go private

"I believe that those who have already paid for their NHS care but who reduce the queues for others by going to the voluntary or not-for-profit or private sectors should be given a helping hand," said Dr Fox.

The Conservatives intend to define standard prices for individual operations, and allow patients take 60 per cent of that price to fund treatment outside the NHS.

For an operation worth £5,000 some £3,000 could be used to pay for treatment of the patient's choice while £2,000 would be left behind to "help the NHS".

The move to allow patients and GPs to use the new "patients passport" would amount to a "fundamental recasting of the relationship between the state and the citizen", said Fox.

The shadow health secretary also pledged to establish transparent funding mechanisms and ending political interference in the health service.

"Labour believe that the patients are there to service the system," he said.

"We believe the system should be there to service the patients."