To hold ideological support for the privatisation is one thing, but to pretend it isn't happening is a far more insidious lie.
To hold ideological support for the privatisation is one thing, but to pretend it isn’t happening is a far more insidious lie
Last week on BBC Question Time, the panellists were met with yet another question about NHS privatisation.
The Times columnist Camilla Cavendish attacked the ‘misleading’ use of the word ‘privatisation’ and immediately asserted that such a trend simply ‘isn’t happening’.
Nigel Farage similarly condemned the ‘entirely false debate’ on the issue, concluding that ‘the word privatisation is bandied about without really meaning anything’.
And, to an extent, Farage is right. A fundamental lack of understanding and transparency has surrounded the government’s changes to the NHS.
The incomprehensible and jargon-filled Health and Social Care Act was presented in a way that few people could engage with.
And when concerns were raised – as they were by the overwhelming majority of doctors,nurses and patients’ groups – they were ignored.
Even the timing of the announcements (who is really following political affairs just two days after Christmas?) seemed to suggest that the government was determined for their ‘reforms’ not to be scrutinised by the public.
Yet, almost three years since the legislation was passed, discussion about the NHS is still dominated by the same ungrounded mudslinging. On one side are fears about ‘creeping privatisation’, which are crudely dismissed as nonsense by the government.
Meanwhile, the prime minister has resorted to defending his actions using emotive anecdotes about family illness.
What these debates are desperately lacking are details of the reforms themselves, the effect they are having and the views of those best placed to debate them: patients and medical professionals.
So, how did the Health and Social Care Act change the NHS? Perhaps the most contentious issue was the decision to encourage competitive tendering and introduce the concept of ‘Any Qualified Provider’.
This allows NHS services to be replaced by healthcare provision from private companies and charities, based on open competition. Furthermore, the Act stated that clinical commissioning groups had an explicit duty to ‘not engage in anti-competitive behaviour’, highlighting the pressure for local commissioning groups to outsource health services.
Only this week, figures showed that since the reforms, a third of NHS contracts have been awarded to private sector providers. These contracts attracted interest from companies such as Serco and Virgin, with some worth over a billion pounds.
In fact, the government’s reforms so clearly represent a form of privatisation that an attempt to reinstate public sector healthcare provision by reversing the Act would likely result in a legal battle with competition lawyers.
And it’s not just NHS contracts where privatisation has taken place – the government’s changes encouraged NHS hospitals to open their doors to patients who have paid to receive healthcare privately.
Before the reforms, up to two per cent of a hospital’s income could be generated in this way. The coalition government raised this cap to 49 per cent. As predicted by campaigners, hospitals are exploiting the change to generate extra income in the face of a funding crisis.
Earlier this year it was revealed that some hospitals had seen up to 40 per cent increases in income from private patients.
When NHS hospitals are encouraged by government policy to offer almost half of their services to private patients, I think it’s fair to use the word ‘privatisation’.
If this is contentious, then what proportion of hospital beds must be filled with private patients before journalists such as Camilla Cavendish concede that the NHS is indeed being gradually privatised?
The irony in the current government’s attitude towards the NHS is striking. Consider the pre-election promise that guaranteed ‘no top-down reorganisation’, followed a year later with the largest piece of health legislation since the NHS was founded.
Or the irony of introducing reform supposedly designed to empower doctors in decision-making, while ignoring the medical profession’s almost unanimous opposition to the changes.
But the most insidious lie is the idea that privatisation isn’t taking place, at a time when NHS contracts are being offered to private companies and hospitals encouraged to welcome fee-paying patients to a greater extent than ever before.
Whether the involvement of the private sector in healthcare should be resisted or welcomed is a different question. But it’s clear that the government’s changes to the NHS cannot be re-branded as anything other than privatisation.
Only when both sides drop their emotive rhetoric, and instead start scrutinising legislation, will this be realised.
George Gillet is a medical student and blogger. Read his blog here, and follow him on Twitter
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
35 Responses to “Why it’s dishonest to claim that the NHS isn’t being privatised”
madasafish
Well we all know who signed all these PFI contracts… the same Party floundering in the “economic competence” polling…
DrPlokta
Yes, profits are profits whether it’s an individual profiting by selling their labour or a company profiting by selling their products and services. I don’t care what organisational structure the entities delivering NHS care have, whether they’re salaried employees, freelancers or companies, I just care that they’re delivering the best service at the lowest price.
David Davies
2 weeks ago, Simon Stevens declared that 94p in every £1 spent is retained within the NHS. He is either an idiot, or a liar. Yet another asset funded over decades by tax-paying plebs will be gifted to the tax-dodging fraudsters who wrecked the economy. Marginal costing will be used to undercut NHS providers, and NHS will cease to be before very much longer.
No one acknowledges TTIP, which will finish the job. EVERY prospective MP should be forced to declare whether they have a personal financial interest in the NHS, in their manifestos.
Leon Wolfeson
That you’re not aware of the charges for some things – not widespread yet, but spreading…
And we have a crisis in dentistry where there’s a shortage of dentists and people are loading extra work onto them by only seeking care when they have bad dental problems rather than having routine checkups!
(If I hadn’t had my problem with a wisdom tooth caught in a routine checkup, for example, I’d have used even more NHS dentistry time than I did ><)
Leon Wolfeson
One, they absolutely cost more.
Two, system’s like France’s have an issue with poorer people not seeking care until they are seriously ill. And they don’t have the same issue of a tide of poverty growing as we do, which would make the system far, far less than economical.
Three, in a system with mandatory yearly payments, you’d end up with millions of people chosing between food and possibly being prosecuted (and not having healthcare access).