Reforms by this government have already seen huge increases in the amount of private patient income brought in by NHS hospitals
The Tories’ plans for the NHS include a double deceit. Not only will they double the pace of cuts next year, putting the health service in crisis, but they cannot say where a single penny of promised extra spending will come from.
And today, new research by the Labour party shows a mood in the Tory party which will dismay supporters of the NHS. A survey of Tory councilors on their plans for future funding shows that more than a quarter are willing to admit they support plans for further changes and privatisation.
Out of 115 respondents to an email sent by Labour students:
A total of 26 support introducing charges for NHS services
·A further 12 support privatisation or increased use of the private sector
Another six want to make cuts to the NHS
This is significant because the current cohort of Conservative councilors is likely to make up a large part of the next crop of Conservative MPs.
Labour students asked the councilors whether spending on the NHS could continue to increase in the next parliament, whether a spending ring-fence is sustainable over the long-term, what the role of the private sector in the NHS should be, and whether the government should consider charging for some NHS services in the future.
Here are some extracts from the responses:
“Means testing is emotive so is queue jumping. But in our present state both seem to me to be fairly acceptable.”
“We cannot carry on providing universal free services for all manner of peripheral pseudo conditions.”
“I feel that we should encourage and support the private sector.”
One councilor seemed to express support for allowing foreign contractors to access the NHS – something that many anti-TTIP campaigners have long been concerned about:
“I firmly believe a successful 21st century NHS must play a role in commissioning healthcare with external partner in the private sector and even abroad.”
The Tories’ extreme spending plans take total spending to 36.0 per cent of GDP in 2019/20. OECD data shows that all of those countries which have levels of public spending at 36 per cent or less as a share of GDP have greater out-of-pocket expenditure as a share of final household consumption than the UK.
A recent letter to the Guardian, signed by more than 100 healthcare professionals, stated that government reforms in 2012 have led to ‘the rapid and unwanted expansion of the role of commercial companies in the NHS’.
Freedom of Information requests by the Labour Party have revealed that this government’s reforms, including the lifting of the Private Patient Income PPI cap have seen NHS hospitals increase their private patient income by some 10 per cent since 2010. This has seen some hospitals increase their private income by up to 40 per cent.
Speaking at the launch of Labour’s NHS week today, shadow health secretary Andy Burnham will say:
“This is the real face of the Tory Party. They have let the cat out of the bag – five more years of David Cameron means more NHS privatisation and charging.
“It is clear that, just like last time, Cameron’s NHS promises have an expiry date of election day stamped on them. He promised no top-down reorganisation and brought forward the biggest-ever top-down reorganisation. If he gets back in, the NHS will be sunk by a toxic mix of cuts and privatisation.”
Ruby Stockham is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow her on Twitter
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33 Responses to “Over a quarter of Tory councilors support further privatisation of the NHS”
Leon Wolfeson
He’s a Tory, of course he thinks things are fine.
Chris Oakley
It isn’t my model.
What is your evidence for French people putting off visiting health care providers? Happy to read it as I agree it is a relevant issue.
Many people argue that EC countries such as France have better healthcare outcomes than the UK so perhaps that is a price the middle class would be prepared to pay, given the opportunity to contribute to a better funded healthcare system.
AlanGiles
I have several problems: I get sick to death of the sanctimonous faux concern over welfare claimants. Duncan-Smith is poision, but everyone here seems to have short memories and forget that it was Purnell who introduced the Freud reforms in full after describing the ignorant Freud as a “welfare expert” – which we all know he wasn’t. Then, we have Rachel Reeves aying she will be “tougher than the Tories” on welfare. Were Labour lying then, are Labour lying now or are they just congenital liars?
Burnham was happy in Any Question broadcasts just after the 2010 election to point out that he had instituted the privatisation of the NHS. Now he is totally against it. Is he?. Do we believe Burnham. Or not?
I get the impression of a desperate shambolic Labour leader who will say or do anything just to win – not for the good of the country but to repair his own damaged ego.He keeps saying he wants to be the first Jewish PM so what does he do? – he (tries) to eat a bacon sandwich in public. Is the guy for real?. It is a shambling display of amateurism, incompetence and hypocrisy.
And finally the floorshow presented by “Leon Wolfeson” or “Guest” as he sometimes calls himself on this site. He insults with his few puerile little insults “Lord Blagger” (Christ is that stupid remark overdone?) or “You’re a Tory”, follwed up with personal insults and suggestions of Anti-Semitism He does it so often including answering his own LW posts with one of his “Guest” rants. To borrow from Groucho Marx, who would want to belong to a club that would have that fool as a member?
Faerieson
Well, I don’t have the kind of selective memory to which you refer. I recognised the well-deserved distrust of Blair and Brown governments, throughout their respective terms. By relinquishing quite so much control to the likes of Campbell and Mandleson, New Labour forfit their soul some time during early infancy. Indeed, I believe that the moment Blair floated- like the worse kind of oily residue- to the surface, marked easily the steepest decline in the Labour movement.
Opportunists like Purnell and the duplicitous David Freud- entirely with his own agenda- were indeed poison to the movement, as Freud’s defection confirms.
The likes of Reeves and Burnham were surely incubated in some sort of media-fuelled tank, entirely for the purposes of attempting to appease a predominantly hostile media. Which harks back to the Campbell-Mandleson ideology, one based more upon exposure-hours than policy. And, isn’t this really where the root of the problem lies, heavily with this septic ability of a wealthy-non-dom-tax-exile press to dictate policy through selective misinformation?
You have stated that IDS is poison- which is undoubtedly the case- but is he so very much worse than Gove, or Hunt, a man who was effectively charged with the task of insider-trading-away even more of the UK’s media? Now he’s charged with what? In a better parallel world, Hunt is surely locked away more safely and appropriately in a small concrete cell!
But, underlying all of this, there still remains the health of a nation. Accessible to all as required, or increasingly for profit? To be run by those whose foremost concern is good health or those who prioritise healthy profit?
Leon Wolfeson
Again, those EC countries spend a heck of a lot more overall. And it’s not the middle class who would be expected to shoulder the burden, is it?