Health service managers have played down fears that reorganisation of primary care trusts will result in some of them operating well below current levels of efficiency for 18 months. But they have criticised the process and timescales involved.

Senior managers from primary care trusts; strategic health authorities; and the NHS Confederation, the representative body for NHS organisations, gave evidence to the parliamentary Health Select Committee last week as part of its inquiry into proposed changes to primary care trusts.

The witnesses said that much of the government's drive to merge primary care trusts …