As a small doctor-led non-profit, EveryDoctor has long been punching above its weight – upwards – at the government and malign right-wing actors peeling off parts of the NHS for private profit. Now, it has declared its intention to scale up its operations because it’s content to watch the “NHS crumble around us” no further.
EveryDoctor: gearing up to fight the PFI con
By the close of 2024, two things were glaringly apparent about the situation facing the NHS. One, was that the Labour Party government has picked up its Conservative counterpart’s mantle on privatisation. Barely into 2025, and already, that’s more clear than ever. In February, as the Canary’s James Wright highlighted that health secretary Wes Streeting was ostensibly fawning over scam Private Finance Initiatives (PFI).
Unsurprisingly then, it was precisely these dodgy PFI type deals that the NHS heads were eyeing up to fix its “crumbling estate”. Notably, the Financial Times reported at the start of March that NHS leaders are drawing up plans for ploughing more private capital into the “dilapidated health estate”.
The second then, is that this business-bought Labour Party government is not going to fix the NHS.
Campaign group EveryDoctor has weighed in over this. It has railed against this privatisation con and the Labour Party’s failure to focus on public investment. It wrote to its supporters on the situation that:
The new Labour government isn’t moving far or fast enough to fix the NHS, and patients and staff are enduring horrific experiences as a result. Instead of investing properly in our hard-working staff, politicians are pointing fingers at them and complaining about low productivity. Instead of investing in rebuilding crumbling NHS architecture, they’re considering yet more privatisation. And as for emergency departments and urgent services, it was horrendous to see them ignore the human suffering occurring in so many NHS hospitals this winter.
Yes the NHS is crumbling, but more failed privatisation won’t fix it
So now, EveryDoctor has told its supporters that enough is enough:
We are not satisfied with remaining a small non-profit making some sort of difference, while the NHS crumbles around us. We must think more ambitiously about what we are doing, change our methods, and change our goals. Ultimately, we need to change the national conversation about the NHS, so that millions start fighting for it.
Of course, as that “small non-profit”, the organisation has done more than most to speak truth to power on NHS privatisation.
Across six years, it has run numerous campaigns to put privatisation into the spotlight. In the process, it has held successive governments to account. It previously teamed up with the Good Law Project. This was to put the Conservative government in the dock over its PPE VIP lane cronyism. It exposed how the government had acted illegally over this.
The group has put out multiple pieces of vital research pulling back the curtain on privatisation. For instance, in 2023, EveryDoctor put the links between politicians and the private healthcare sector on the map. In 2024, it published an updated separate map as well. This was to reveal the enormous scale of NHS services outsourced and privatised across the UK. In another investigation, it dug up the eye-watering sums of public money NHS England had been throwing at the private sector for beds in mental health facilities.
Throughout, the group has actively approached politicians to get them on board with its work to fix the NHS. Its most recent campaign brought its ‘doctors’ manifesto’ – its blueprint for doing just that, designed by doctors – to 117 MPs and their teams.
Needless to say, its work uncovering these connections and engaging politicians and the public has input immensely into conversations around the con that is privatisation. Notably, as the group pointed out, across the “thousands of media pieces” it has contributed to, “read by millions”, it has:
significantly to public awareness about the state of the NHS
Nonetheless, with the Labour government continuing its march to NHS privatisation, EveryDoctor plans to step up its work to combat it.
A movement of millions to save the NHS
As the Canary reported in January, to achieve this, EveryDoctor has big ambitions. The group wants to grow its following from thousands, to a vibrant patient and staff community of millions.
It has already hit the ground running, but for its next steps, in just the coming weeks it plans to:
- Ramp up its messaging on what’s really happening to the NHS and break out of the echo-chamber. It will use input from experts to craft this and make sure it reaches a wider audience. As it pointed out: “It is incredibly important that *everyone* is armed with the correct information, not just those who are very politically aware and interested.”
- Reworking its website to be more accessible and approachable for everyone to get involved.
- Run weekly online community meetings for people interested in what’s happening to the NHS. The next one is on Thursday 6 March at 8pm. This will delve into a new important campaign about social care.
- It’s also hiring a new creative campaigner – you can find out about the role here.
The group knows it will take nothing short of this. To tackle the powerful forces hell-bent on putting the NHS in the hands of private profiteers, it needs millions on board. As it noted:
This is a daunting goal, because no one else has managed to do it in the past 40 years. Instead, think tanks and politicians have pushed the narrative that privatisation is best and the NHS isn’t worth investing in properly, and that’s why we have crumbling hospitals and unsupported staff, and threadbare patient services and overcrowding.
They have more money than us, more access to power, and more clout with the mainstream media outlets too (most of which are owned by billionaires in the UK). But do you know what we have? We have evidence on our side, and our expertise as a doctor-led organisation, and we’re going to give this our best shot because it’s now or never. If anyone can get the ball rolling on this, it’s EveryDoctor’s amazing network.
In short, EveryDoctor is galvanising a movement from the ground up to save the UK’s ailing public health service. It’s needed more than ever, because it’s clear the Labour Party government cannot be trusted with the NHS.
Featured image via the Canary
