DAVID CAMERON warned yesterday that the Government’s NHS reforms were essential to avert a £20bn funding shortfall by 2015.

Signalling his determination to press ahead with the highly controversial changes, the Prime Minister said the status quo was ‘‘not an option’’.

Speaking to NHS staff at Ealing Hospital, in west London, he proclaimed his own ‘‘love’’ for the health service and declared that the reforms were in the national interest.

But he said the rising costs associated with an ageing population and increasingly expensive treatments could not be ignored.

‘‘If we stay as we are, the NHS will need £130bn a year by 2015 – meaning a potential funding gap of £20bn,’’ he said.

‘‘There’s only one option we have got, and that is to change and modernise the NHS, to make it more efficient and more effective, and above all, more focused on prevention, on health, not just sickness,’’ he said.

The NHS Future Forum, set up to oversee the process, will report recommendations at the beginning of next month and the Government would respond later in the month, he said.

But he insisted the reforms would be ‘‘evolutionary, not revolutionary’’ and a ‘‘logical extension of triedand- tested policies initiated by governments of all parties in recent years’’.

Seeking to reassure critics that the NHS would remain ‘‘much like what we have today’’, he went on: ‘‘Let me be clear – there will be no privatisation, there will be no cherrypicking from private providers, there will be no new upfront costs people have to pay to get care.

‘‘Absolutely not. These are red lines we will not cross.’’ Under the proposals, groups of GPs would be given control of about £60bn-worth of NHS spending, with a remit to commission treatment and services from any willing provider – including private companies. Dr Stewart Findlay, a Bishop Auckland GP who leads the Durham Dales pathfinder group of family doctors, said: “The changes in the White Paper are supported by many grassroots GPs already. Most consortia have already looked at ways of involving hospital colleagues and nurses in our commissioning groups.

We would welcome changes that would make these proposals explicit.”

Dr Findlay said GP consortia would like to have the option of turning to the private sector “if their local NHS service was failing their patients”.

David Hunter, professor of health management at Durham University, said Mr Cameron’s speech was full of rhetoric and gave very little detail of how the plans might be changed.