NHS Trust managers are to be told to put patient care ahead of cash targets, Scottish Health Minister Sam Galbraith said yesterday.

In future, their performance will be judged on quality of care and not money, he said.

The Minister said the trusts had lost sight of their ''one true objective'', caring for the sick, because of the pressure on them to conform to the internal market.

That would change, and the Government wanted patient care and service quality to be ''the drivers of everything that the NHS does in Scotland'', he told the Association of Surgeons of Great Britain and Ireland conference in Edinburgh.

Mr Galbraith, himself a surgeon, said: ''Until now the statutory duties of trusts and their managers have been all about finance.

''The internal market has gone. Co-operation has replaced competition.

''When new trusts are set up they will have new statutory duties to make quality of care their top priority.''

The Minister also said they wanted to reduce bureaucracy and eliminate competition.

He gave a pledge that the new NHS would see better co-operation between doctors and management to keep Scotland at the forefront of clinical excellence, and said there was no doubt that health would be a major concern of the Scottish Parliament.

The Minister said that with the White Paper, Designed to Care, the Government had developed for the first time in the NHS's history strategies for the service which were different north and south of the Border.

Meanwhile, the BMA in Scotland has welcomed asurances by Mr Galbraith that clinical services will not be provided by the private sector in any Private Finance Initiative project.