The prime minister Gordon Brown has pledged to 'back to the hilt' NHS staff when they want to improve services.

Speaking at a dinner hosted by HSJ to celebrate the NHS's 60th anniversary, Mr Brown said that first class care required government to give NHS staff the chance to lead change. He highlighted health minister Lord Darzi's recommendations to "empower and set free NHS staff".

Mr Brown said that clinical advisory groups would be set up at every level of the NHS.

There will be incentives to reward innovation at the front line, greater freedoms for high performing GP practices and hospitals to develop new services and a commitment from government "that wherever staff and clinicians can show that change will improve services we will back you to the hilt".

The prime minister thanked managers and staff for their help in transforming the NHS over the past 10 years.

"A decade ago people wondered if the NHS at 50 had any future at all," he said. "It has not only survived, it has benefited enormously from a vivifying regime of more money, better management and much patient-focused reform. At 60 it is more firmly than ever part of the fabric of British national life."

The next stage would be greater prevention of illness, he said.

"Just as the formation of the NHS in 1948 was seen as a bold and daring leap forward, so the move to the preventive NHS will be another bold and daring leap forward."

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