In a speech on 6 January, Keir Starmer announced “a new agreement that will expand the relationship between the NHS and the private healthcare sector”.
He ignored the fact that private provision of NHS services already costs the NHS £10m every week in leeched profit. But that’s perhaps no surprise given that lobbyists and firms with private healthcare connections have brought in over half a million pounds to Labour’s cabinet since 2023. And that’s on top of a £4m donation to the party from Quadrature Capital, which has investments in private healthcare.
The fresh increase in private sector NHS involvement
The Labour Party prime minister will increase the role of the sector to the point where privatised services will provide an additional million appointments, scans, and operations a year.
This is a 20% increase on the current private provision of five million operations, appointments and tests annually. Starmer is continuing the agenda of the Conservative Party, whereby privatised NHS services already treat around 10% of patients, an increase on 3% in 2011.
Despite privatised services accounting for one tenth of patients, almost one fifth of the healthcare budget goes to that sector.
Starmer said the privatisation drive will:
make the spaces, facilities and resources of private hospitals more readily available to the NHS. That’s more beds, more operations, more care – available to the NHS.
But the more efficient way to make such expertise and resources available to the NHS is to end the two-tier health system and fully nationalise healthcare. Privatised healthcare services take resources and staff away from the NHS, which we are then renting back in the cost of private profits.
The prime minister further said:
I’m not interested in putting ideology before patients and I’m not interested in moving at the pace of excuses.
But that’s precisely what he is doing by increasing the amount of the NHS budget going to private profit.
Austerity 2.0 while hospitals crumble
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has already walked back the headline figures in her budget, announcing cuts of 5% to departments. And Labour aren’t even providing enough capital funding to fix the healthcare infrastructure we already have, let alone expanding buildings and technology to meet demand.
Healthcare leaders have said hospitals are “outright dangerous” due to years of underfunding. Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the NHS needs an extra £6.7bn per year to maintain its estate. Labour has claimed it’s providing an “additional” £13.6bn in capital funding, but that’s actually a £3.1bn increase on the 2023-24 capital budget.
“Parasite”
Co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, Dr Tony O’Sullivan, commented on Starmer’s expansion of private provision:
Just as in the 2000s, the NHS could provide those million appointments and build sustainable capacity if funding was invested to reopen theatres, provide equipment, support more NHS GPs, community and hospital staff
That is value for money. Keir Starmer claims to set ‘ideology’ aside whilst choosing to invest in expensive long-term private sector contracts. Private ‘spare capacity’ relies on NHS staff and funding to resource their expansion.
Keir Starmer’s ‘choice’ is to ignore the soaring profits enjoyed by the private sector operating on NHS patients for routine cataract surgery whilst NHS eye departments lose that funding and their staff are unable to treat many patients with other sight-threatening conditions in time.
The private sector needs NHS funding to be diverted and NHS staff to reduce their NHS hours to staff ‘spare capacity’. Feeding the parasite undermines the health of the NHS host.
Featured image via The Times and The Sunday Times – YouTube
