Sweeping improvements to the information the NHS makes available to pregnant women before, while and after they give birth were announced yesterday by Alan Milburn.
The health secretary is to ask the national institute for clinical excellence to draw up new guidelines for patients, GPs and hospitals to cover pregnancy, labour, postnatal care and particularly sensitive issues such as hysterectomies.
The initiative, unveiled on the final day of Labour's spring conference in Glasgow, was a rare policy announcement at a gathering dominated by Iraq.
Mr Milburn said women would be given information under the Nice plan to help them decide how they would give birth, learn which painkillers were available and understand the implications of options such as caesarean, forceps and suction deliveries.
Guidelines to be issued by 2005 will aim to tackle wide variations in postnatal care from midwives and health visitors in different parts of the country.
And the health secretary also proposes guidelines covering the 52,000 hysterectomies and 19,000 partial hysterectomies a year, some of which may be considered unnecessary. Mr Milburn's aim is to rectify what experts call "information asymmetry" which denies patients the knowledge to have a balanced discussion with health professionals.
A murmur of discontent was heard when Mr Milburn said he was pressing ahead with the creation of so-called foundation hospitals, devolving responsibility from Whitehall to local boards with patients electing representatives.
Three special question-and-answer sessions with junior defence and Foreign Office ministers on Iraq were organised at the conference as the government worked hard to put over its case to activists.
One party manager spoke privately in Glasgow of about half a dozen corrosive issues that were souring relations between the party leadership and grassroots, most prominently Iraq and the firefighters' dispute.
Last week's announcement to protect the pay and conditions of council workers when services are contracted out to the private sector resolved one of the points of contention, and the party manager said efforts were being made to resolve the others.
But prominent union leaders, including John Edmonds of the GMB, have warned that union executives will not approve a plan to guarantee the Labour party £40m over five years until most of the others - including the firefighters and Iraq - are settled.
The deputy prime minister, John Prescott, rattled off statistics to show how Labour had increased spending on public services to create more teachers, nurses and police.
Labour's general secretary, David Triesman, said: "We have created a strong economy and huge redistribution, near full employment, low interest rates, opportunity, compassion where compassion is needed. It's not a bad story is it? And we need to tell it."
· The race for the leadership of the politically important union GMB will be between its London secretary, Paul Kenny, and the northern secretary, Kevin Curran, after the Scottish secretary, Robert Parker, fighting an employment tribunal allegation of sexual harassment, withdrew from the contest.
