Patients across the country are to have their health funding rolled into their social care funding and be expected to manage both themselves. Is this empowerment, or something more sinister, health experts wonder?

New NHS boss Simon Stevens has revealed his true privatising colours with this week's announcement on personal health budgets - which would wreck England's NHS services and leave the field clear for big business.

Yesterday's announcement that millions of patients would be given individual pots of NHS funding is just a rebranded voucher system - and rebranded cuts.

A Thatcherite 'voucher' system is being imposed on England's NHS is the worst way to deliver 'personalisation'.

Is 'person-centred care' being muddled with individual consumerism - and why so little debate between the parties on the latest fundamental shift in our NHS?

Personal budgets have serious implications for the ethos of the NHS which must be considered if health and social care are to be merged - universality and provision based on need are principles we should not be so quick to abandon.

Aside from whether patients welcome the cash payments there are wider issues that need addressing, namely whether the scheme strips cash from the NHS and so weakens the service for others; will it be a subsidy for private care; and who steps in if the money is spent before the year is up?