ABSTRACT
In education, choice may be a good surrogate for 'bussing'; in health, and it may tend more to degenerate into provider selection of consumer rather than vice versa. Indeed, even as New Labour's 'new market' begins seriously in 2006. Ironically, planning services at regional level to ensure that specialised and emergency services were coherent could be compatible with choice for 'elective' treatments, in most cases, with 'floors and ceilings' in terms of hospitals' overall viability established by planners. Replacing 'command and control' with 'markets', in public services such as the National Health Service (NHS), often obscures the fact that both lead to a standard 'product'. The chapter considers the theoretical underpinnings to the debate about choice as applied for example to the NHS and how New Labour's policy is being implemented 'on the ground'. The 'choice debate' in the English NHS has equated 'market choice' with 'exit' from providers.
