Mike Scott, Chair of Nottingham and Notts branch of the NHS campaign group Keep Our NHS Public writes in response to this recent article Budget 2025 legal comments: ‘New PFI’, neighbourhood health centres and NHS investment.
Mike writes:
‘Everyone knows that the NHS is struggling, and the government has promised to revive and protect it. But is Wes Streeting’s Ten-Year Plan (TYP) going to solve its problems or make them worse?
‘National campaign group Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) has been critical of the plan, pointing out that it fails to address the social causes of much poor health and is overly reliant on both new technology and private finance.
‘Many health conditions have essentially social causes, such as poverty, lack of cheap healthy food, and poor-quality housing – and the main users of the NHS are older people and the less well-off. But the government has done little either to prepare for the consequences of an ageing population or to provide sufficient good-quality social housing.
‘The TYP promises that we will all have “a doctor in our pocket”, but it’s estimated that 20% of the population have little or no digital access, while newly trained GPs are struggling to find jobs because practices haven’t got enough money to take them on. And most of us would rather speak to a human being than rely on an app!
‘So, will private finance save the day? The evidence is that it won’t. Far from “assisting the NHS by reducing waiting lists for surgery”, private hospitals cherry-pick only the cheap and simple operations and are able to lure doctors and nurses away from the NHS while still making a very healthy profit. The reality is that the more they do, the longer the waiting lists get for those unable or unwilling to pay, because it’s largely the same staff working in both public and private sectors.
‘Another myth is that hospitals and “health hubs” can be built more cheaply by private construction companies than by the public sector. The “Public-Private Partnerships” proposed by the TYP are simply an updated version of the disastrous Private Finance Initiative (PFI), brought in by the Conservatives in the early 1990s and taken up with enthusiasm by Tony Blair’s Labour government.
‘We were told these would provide wonderful new hospitals for free, but the reality was somewhat different. The hospitals were certainly built, but many buildings were substandard, and the repayments by hospital trusts brought many close to bankruptcy – including the Notts-based Sherwood Forest Hospital Trust.
‘Eventually, both Conservative and Labour governments realised their mistake and abandoned the scheme – but over £40 billion of debt is still to be repaid years later. In order to make a profit, private companies have to overcharge the NHS, whereas the public sector can build at cost, so there is no possibility that private could be cheaper. There is no upfront cost for us, the taxpayers, but the long-term debt simply diverts much-needed money from services and staff over many decades.
‘The private health industry is always keen to play up the supposed benefits to the NHS of their increased role but is rather less keen to focus on the conflicts of interest involved. Look at this quote: “an opportunity (is being) missed to leverage the global reputation, infrastructure and expertise of the NHS to attract inward investment that can help secure its long-term sustainability and integrate innovation – while remaining true to its founding principles”.
‘There’s no indication why such investment would be so attractive to the private sector or how it would affect the funding of services in the future. As the old saying has it: if it looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is…
‘In the last General Election, the Labour Party committed itself to an NHS that “will always be publicly owned and publicly funded”. KONP expects them to live up to this commitment and not dismantle it piecemeal, leading inevitably to a US-style two-tier service, where only those who can pay get the best treatment. The NHS was set up for everyone, and we won’t stand by and watch its founding principles fade away.’
KONP is a non-party-political organisation that exists to protect the NHS, its
staff and patients. For more information, go to www.keepournhspublic.com or email us at nottskonpcampaign@hotmail.co.uk
