A new analysis of NHS contracts reveals that £6.7bn, or £10m a week, is estimated to have left NHS budgets in private profits on contracts given to for-profit firms between January 2012 and May 2024. It leaves major questions for the political parties during the general election – not least Labour NHS plans, which commit to using the private sector to support the health service.
Private companies creaming off the NHS
The analysis was conducted by the public ownership campaign organisation We Own It. This is based on 72,258 NHS private contracts, worth a total of £130.7bn.
£5.2bn, or 78%, of the £6.7bn total profits are from contracts for services, which, campaigners say, can be provided in house by the NHS.
With public finances tight, We Own It says their analysis shows that the next government should deploy available public funds more efficiently by reducing or ending NHS outsourcing for services such as surgeries, tests, cleaning, and catering. Labour NHS plans will be at the forefront of people’s minds with this.
Johnbosco Nwogbo, lead campaigner at We Own It, said:
While millions are stuck on NHS waiting lists, private shareholders are taking out billions from NHS balance sheets. At a time when almost all parties are saying that money is tight, the need to keep every penny in the NHS has never been more pressing.
He added:
It matters whether parties commit to invest more in the NHS, but it matters just as much, if not more, how money the is already available to the NHS is spent. And outsourcing is a wasteful way to spend NHS money, as our new research shows.
NHS services could be improved
Campaigners say that if the cost of the new operating theatres recently opened at the King George Hospital to cut waiting lists in Ilford is a good indication, the NHS could be opening the equivalent of a new operating theatre each week to cut waiting lists with the money it is losing to private profits.
Nwogbo noted:
Our analysis shows that Spire Healthcare, the biggest private hospital chain in Britain, has received NHS contracts worth a total of £518 million and made an estimated £17 million profit out of that.
Last month, Spire Healthcare boss Justin Ash warned politicians that the private healthcare sector do not have the capacity to help cut NHS waiting lists.
We Own It analysis has previously revealed that 94% of NHS outsourcing contracts for services are set to expire within the next five years. They say this means that Labour NHS plans will have a major opportunity to reverse privatisation if they win.
Labour NHS plans: at odds with reality?
However, as the Canary previously reported there is controversy around Labour NHS plans. For example, the party’s main policy document previously said the “NHS is not for sale”. However, now the party’s manifesto reads that the NHS “will always be publicly owned and publicly funded”. What that doesn’t rule out is shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s plans to increase private provision of services within the NHS. This can only increase costs for the public because then profit eats away at NHS budgets.
In Labour’s manifesto, it states “Labour will use spare capacity in the independent sector to ensure patients are diagnosed and treated more quickly”.
Meanwhile, a March review by researchers at the University of Oxford shows that outsourcing in healthcare provision leads to worse care for patients. Furthermore, in their April report, the British Medical Journal’s Commission on the Future of the NHS (under the subheading of “food”), identifies outsourcing in areas like NHS catering as leading to poorer health outcomes. Similar outcomes have also been found in hospital cleaning.
Featured image via GMB – YouTube
