Plans to scrap Birmingham health trusts employing 2,000 people have been criticised by a powerful Commons committee as David Cameron insisted there was no turning back over radical reforms to the NHS.

The Commons Health Select Committee issued a hard-hitting report on the Government’s plans to axe Primary Care Trusts, including three in Birmingham, as well as regional health authorities such as West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, which is based in Edgbaston.

Committee member Valerie Vaz (Lab Walsall South) said: “This is a huge re-organisation launched without consulting GPs, which will cost a lot of money at the same time as the NHS is meant to be making efficiency savings.”

The report published by the committee, chaired by former Tory health secretary Stephen Dorrell, said: “The committee does not believe that this change of policy has yet been sufficiently explained given the costs and uncertainties generated by the process.”

The Government is scrapping health quangos and has instead invited GPs to form consortia which will be responsible directly for providing health care and commissioning treatment from hospitals on behalf of patients.

So far, the Department of Health has given approval for six consortia across the West Midlands, including two in south Birmingham, one in Solihull, one in Walsall, one in Dudley and one calling itself the Black Country GP Consortium, which includes 18 practices in the Black Country.

The Government’s plans for the NHS have been denounced by six health service unions, including the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Nursing, as “potentially disastrous”.

But Mr Cameron insisted that change was essential.

He said: “We need modernisation, on both sides of the equation. Modernisation to do something about the demand for health care, which is about public health.

"And modernisation to make the supply of health care more efficient, which is about opening up the system, being competitive and cutting out waste and bureaucracy.

“Put another way: it’s not that we can’t afford to modernise; it’s that we can’t afford not to modernise.”

But the Prime Minister came under fire after telling a radio interviewer that the NHS was “second rate” because death rates for cancer and heart disease were higher in the UK than other parts of Europe. He then corrected himself, saying he meant that Britain shouldn’t settle for “second best”.

In a letter to The Times ahead of the publication of the Health and Social Care Bill, the heads of six health unions expressed their “extreme concerns” about plans to create greater commercial competition between the NHS and private companies within the health service.

The signatories, including BMA chairman Hamish Meldrum, RCN chief executive Peter Carter and the heads of health for the Unison and Unite unions, said: “There is clear evidence that price competition in health care is damaging.

It follows a report by the NHS Confederation which acknowledged the potential benefits of the changes, which will give GPs power over commissioning treatment, but warned they were “extraordinarily risky” at a time when the NHS is facing its toughest financial constraints for a decade.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said the Government’s plans would lead to the “destruction” of quality services across the public sector.