The Liberal Democrats have criticised the government's delays in releasing an assessment of all the targets set for the Department of Health.They claim that the 1998 white paper The New NHS has generated over 2,000 measures to be monitored - with more at lower levels. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Nick Harvey said the 'amazing labyrinth of targets in the NHS will take up vast numbers of man-hours to manage and measure'. He added: 'At best they are vague and optimistic; at worst mutually contradictory and damaging because they distort clinical priorities.'

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