The excellent Dr X has been in contact, to point out an interesting juxtaposition of quotes about how liberated GP commissioning consortia will be in practice.

NHS chief executive Sir David Nicholson told the Commons Health Select Committee last week that GP consortia may be forced by the DH to share back-office functions. He said, "‘We haven’t made a decision on how much freedom GPs will have. We need to avoid every GP inventing their own back-office".

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley told the National Association for Primary Care's annual conference last week that the National Commissioning Board "will not interfere with how you achieve these objectives or how you run your consortium. It is there to support you, not tell you what to do".

So the DH will tell consortia how they should be run.

But the National Commissioning Board will not.