NHS sell-out: Tories sign largest privatisation deal in history worth £780MILLION

[blacksunday]

Jeremy Hunt’s claims that the NHS is not for sale lay in tatters last night after he signed the largest privatisation deal in history.

The Health Secretary, who has repeatedly denied health services are being siphoned off to private firms under this Government, faced furious reactions as the £780million deal was revealed.

The sales to a total of 11 private firms, some with dubious records, are intended to help hospitals tackle the backlog of patients waiting for surgery and tests.

Heart, joint and a variety of operations will be carried out, as well as scans, X-rays and other diagnostic tests. Under the deal struck by the NHS Supply Chain, many services will be provided in mobile units, rather than hospitals.

The news was met by anger, not least because three of the 11 profit-driven firms have previously been slammed for providing poor quality of care.

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In 'the largest privatization deal in history' cat-e-gory, I wonder how much the Labour 2000 NHS Act legislation to INCREASE the use of the private sector actually cost?

newleftreview.org/II/62/tony-wood-good-riddance-to-new-labour

“The 2000 NHS Act, meanwhile, called for a ‘mixed economy’ in healthcare, introducing ‘Independent Sector Treatment Centres’ to compete with the public sector in low-risk elective surgery, and expanding the role of private companies in primary care and community health. The same year a Concordat was signed making the use of public funds for operations in private hospitals a normal, rather than exceptional, practice.”

“What has been the impact of these changes? Though NHS funding rose significantly after 2000—on average, 7 per cent a year in real terms—the costs of creating and operating the internal market now consume 10 per cent of the total NHS budget; sizeable sums have gone on the expansion of new managerial layers.”

“The characteristic paradox of New Labour’s record in healthcare is that, by 2008, there were 13,000 fewer general and acute beds than in 1999, while a ‘burgeoning market of alternative providers’ has developed, ready to draw personnel and resources away from the NHS.”

Clearly the Conservatives would not alone in bringing in the private sector to help reduce NHS waiting, the difference being in the past it appeared to not only unbalance services, often replicating what was being done and skewing NHS budgets, but NHS staff had alternative health employers to go to - and SOMEHOW at the end of it, there were less NHS beds.

An alternative to the coalitions public sector slogan when finances were tight paying 'less for more', it appears back then that the mantra was paying 'more for less', which would not happen in the private sector real world, so is taxpayer/user incompetent in the public sector. IMO.

£780million is a drop in the ocean compared to PFI costs.

Even the New Statesman (which puts those costs at around the £80billion mark) says that Labour needs to own up to being the party that has done the most to privatise NHS.

www.newstatesman.com/staggers/2014/07/save-nhs-labour-must-face-ugly-truth-pfi

Draylon I would believe the techs employed to use state of the art equipment controlled by modern software provide a better service than frustrated radiographers using whatever the NHS has managed to procure despite its massive bureaucracy.

I once moved from a technical job involving radar from the private sector to the public sector and my first reaction on seeing the hardware (in air traffic control) was to laugh out loud.

Public sector bodies are risk averse, slow to innovate, prone to coverups and self-serving. The NHS suffers from the same problems many public sector bodies do they are monopolies and those are a bad thing anywhere. NHS management has very little incentive to hit above their targets.

"Public sector bodies are risk averse, slow to innovate, prone to coverups and self-serving"

And private bodies are none of the above??

Private bodies are there to make profit, not for any higher purpose. You will find higher purpose only on the public sector front lines.

"You will find higher purpose only on the public sector front lines."

P-lease, don't us a Britishers have a historic quote for those in 'the front lines'?

"Lions led by donkeys"?

The problem being when structuring public sector services, there is no competition, there are no market forces putting their very existence in doubt, they always expect annual increases in the budget, so the 'top layers' get bloated, reporting lines from 'the front' therefore get further stretched/removed - so the taxpayer/end users end up getting 'less for more', as who DARE make a statement suggesting that the public sector is as financially efficient, or more efficient as a whole, than the private sector?

But no one SHOULD expect that, no one should expect the NHS be measured in Productivity levels used for an economy/factory.

But we have to be aware when 'as a whole' it gets too top heavy, reporting lines too blurred, as they would have done in ANY company without performance/costing reviews for 13-years.

P.S. The NHS budget was significantly increased over that time, the first decade financed by the tax receipt proceeds of an unsustainable financial bubble, that when burst, left us with a financial black hole, a large contributer to the 2010 £150 billion annual budget deficit.

So OF COURSE NHS services should have improved over that time, what services in the public/private sector would NOT with that financial boost, but the fact remains that too much of that money did NOT get to the front line.

So we are where we are, there is no doubling of budget option as there was in 2001/2 when the UK finances BALANCED, we still have a honking great £90 billion deficit, so as 'shareholders' of the State, like any shareholders having pumped in huge amounts of ££££ - we HAVE to expect our governments to try to get 'more for less'.

How we do that, I dunno, I'm not clever-er-er enough to tell you, but what I do know is that spouting ideological rants for political purposes that ALL other options (other that a fat inefficient State) is a no go zone, is rather short sided.

Especially when those spouting its main fears are based on their own record of ££££incompetence in TRYING other private sector alternative solutions.

Thank you Draylon, that was really interesting.

Isitmebut, it's not safe to assume that x increase in NHS budget should have led to y improvement in the front line, because the demands on the NHS (ageing population with complex health needs, new hugely expensive drugs etc) have also increased.

Boulevard .... well it should have at least ensured better 'kit', but don't forget the pressures on the NHS in 2001 were far less than they were in 2010 - when focusing on the age/numbers factors.

Similar to home building and other 'social' issues, the fact is the tax payer money was available, but were the right choices made on how hundreds of ££billions were spent. Too late now, we have to get on with it.