MADCAP market reforms to England’s NHS are draining enough cash each year to fund 175,000 nurses or 10 new hospitals, a think tank said yesterday.

The annual price of competition and privatisation imposed on the health service by politicians now stands at £4.5 billion, said the New Economics Foundation (NEF).

In a hard-hitting report the NEF concluded that there was no truth in claims that reforms pursued by Labour and the Tories had saved cash — and all the facts suggested the opposite.

“In spite of the evidence, momentum towards an increasingly marketised UK healthcare system is going unchecked,” it warned.

NEF head of social policy Anna Coote said: “The drive to turn the NHS into a competitive marketplace flies in the face of clear evidence that markets in healthcare fail taxpayers, citizens and patients.

“Yet as things get worse for the NHS, the government prescribes more of the same. This is ideology gone mad. ”