Gordon Brown has promised an array of screening tests designed to shift the focus of the NHS towards prevention rather than cure and to provide more “personal and responsive” services.

In a speech delivered on Monday at the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Widwifery at King’s College London, Mr Brown promised “new access to check-ups, screening tests, and preventive health vaccines.”

He said that doctors would become advisers as well as physicians, nurses would become trainers as well as carers, and patients would be not just consumers but partners in their care.

The announcement follows that given last week of the creation of an NHS constitution, setting …