Corbyn backs cap on private NHS contractor bosses’ pay

Deny firms NHS contracts if boss earns 20 times junior worker, says Labour leader

 

Jeremy Corbyn has called for a pay cap to tackle runaway wages for bosses of private firms bidding for NHS contracts.

A Labour government would deny contracts to any company where bosses earned more than 20 times a junior worker, he said today.

Corbyn unveiled the 20:1 policy on Tuesday, and has now confirmed this would apply to private firms seeking to run NHS services.

 

He said today that NHS England spending on private providers has more than doubled since 2010, calling this ‘privatising our NHS by stealth’.

Labour said the basic pay for chief executive of outsourcing giant Serco was £850,000, compared with the £340,000 for a top-earning chief executive in an NHS trust.

 

Corbyn said:

“Health privateers are earning huge sums at taxpayers’ expense, while health workers have faced a pay freeze. When health services are privatised, the brakes come off the pay of the executives in charge.

Shrinking the widening pay gap in health will support Labour’s plans to end health privatisation and bring services into a secure, publicly provided NHS.”

Labour said spending on private providers was £8.722 billion in 2015/16, or 7.6 per cent of the NHS’s day-to-day running costs, up from £4.144 billion, or 4.4 per cent in 2009/10.

See: Public supports increasing taxes to fund the NHS

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