Frank Field, the former Labour minister and pioneer of schemes to import foreign doctors to tackle waiting lists, said a minority of consultants were glad when patients had to wait many months because that gave them an incentive to jump the queue by paying to be treated privately.

He said it was as important for Tony Blair to face down this hard core of consultants as it had been to Lady Thatcher to face down Arthur Scargill. "Some consultants are determined that these schemes to treat patients abroad and bring over foreign doctors will not work. The waiting lists are the recruiting sergeants for private practice."

Mr Field was responding to an acknowledgement by the Department of Health that its initiative to import European consultants to increase the throughput of hospitals in England has resulted in only four local schemes.

The chief executive of Birmingham City hospital said a team of surgeons from Germany recruited to help reduce the waiting lists had returned home without carrying out a single operation. According to a report in the Health Service Journal, two ophthalmologists and two anaesthetists were expecting to perform 1,000 eye operations, but were blocked by local consultants, who argued that the waiting list for cataracts was not long enough to justify the scheme.

Hans Finck, managing director of German Medicine Net, the company that brought over the doctors, refused to discuss the Birmingham case, but raised questions about the attitude of UK consultants elsewhere.

He said: "It seems that in some cases there are conflicts of interest in the local health economy because a long waiting list can be seen as an added incentive for patients to go private. A shorter waiting list would take away that incentive."

The Department of Health said any obstruction by consultants was a local matter that should be handled by the hospitals concerned.

"Four overseas clinical teams are in place, including a London-wide project at Central Middlesex hospital, where at least 1,200 patients will have been treated by the end of this year," a spokeswoman said. "Clinicians have been recruited from France, Germany, Italy and South Africa. More schemes will also come on stream next month as more trusts take advantage of the opportunities this project provides.

"Patient safety and quality of care are our number one priority. Only those schemes that meet our robust criteria - including aftercare arrangements and language competence - are given the go-ahead. This is why some schemes have not been taken forward," she added.

Mr Field said the government should make a firm commitment to clear the waiting list for surgery not requiring an overnight stay in hospital before the next election. It should give patients waiting more than a set number of months the option to choose where to have the operation done from a list of approved suppliers, thereby taking away the blocking power of the consultants.

"We will not succeed with our reform of the NHS unless patients have that choice," he said.