MORE than eight out of 10 operations which NHS bosses paid a private health company to carry out never happened.
Tameside health bosses paid the Greater Manchester Surgical Centre to carry out 777 operations last year but sent only 101 patients to the unit.
New figures, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show health bosses across Greater Manchester have forked out around £10m to South African company Netcare for operations which haven't been carried out since it opened in May 2005.
Three years ago regional health bosses signed a five-year £70m deal with the company on behalf of the 10 local trusts.
But as waiting times have fallen at the region's hospitals fewer people have opted to go to the Trafford private unit - in 2007 less than two thirds of the operations paid for were actually carried out.
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More than 20 Labour MPs have criticised the government for failing to protect poor families from the impact of the abolition of the 10p income tax band next week.
They have signed a Commons early day motion saying that they are "dismayed" at the government's failure to do more to support the 5 million poorer households who risk losing out under Brown's initiative.
Brown grabbed the headlines in his final budget as chancellor last year by announcing that the basic rate of income tax would be cut from 22p in the pound to 20p.
But the cut was funded almost entirely by the abolition of the 10p starting rate of income tax.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies claims that these income tax changes, which will take effect on April 6, will leave around 5.3 million families earning between £5,400 and £18,500 a year worse off.
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