The government is still trying to privatise NHS Professionals, and the opposition needs your support.
Despite mounting public opposition, the government is still ploughing on with the privatisation of a key part of the NHS.
NHS Professionals – an in-house emergency staffing agency that provides over 90,000 doctors and other healthcare workers for around 60 NHS trusts in England – is set to be sold off in the Autumn, flying in the face of public pressure.
In recent weeks, 75 MPs have signed an Early Day Motion opposing the sale and a petition against the sell-off with 16,000 signatures was delivered to the Department of Health this morning.
This is on top of the overall view of the general public, 84 per cent of whom wish the NHS to remain publicly owned.
As well as flying in the face of public opinion, the government has been conducting the sale of NHS Professionals in secret, refusing to answer questions in parliament.
Health minister Philip Dunne dodged questioning about the sale, saying it was a ‘confidential commercial negotiation’.
The Government’s plan to plough ahead with the sale of NHS Professionals is deeply disappointing. We know that private companies involved in the public sector suck resources out of the system, and have often been guilty of dangerous corner-cutting.
Caroline Lucas MP, who pressed Dunne in parliament on the issue, said.
NHS professionals saves the health service around £70m a year by supplying staff more cheaply than private agencies.
The NHS already spends nearly £4bn a year on agency staff and the government admits there’s been an “explosion” in the cost. In 2015-16 agency fees were £1.4bn higher than expected.
The logic in this privatisation, therefore, is clearly lacking.
Plans to sell-off NHS Professionals were shelved in 2010 and again in 2014. Campaigners say the plans can be halted once more.
Along with the Early Day Motion and petition, 7000 members of the public have written to their MP expressing opposition to the plans.
The behind-closed-doors privatisation of a key NHS service would set a dangerous precedent. But it’s not too late to act.
Sign the We Own It petition here; contact your MP demanding they sign the Early Day Motion; and email those in government responsible for the sale here.
25 Responses to “The campaign against a secretive NHS sell-off is growing”
Robert Wilkinson
Agency staff are paid more than twice what normal nurses are (the cost to the tax payer must be more than twice as much to pay for the bureaucracy of the agency and the salaries of their non-clinical staff), and hence many nurses are tempted to work as agency staff in neighbouring Health Trusts to their own.
The NHS should increase the pay of regular nurses and curb the use of agencies. Much of the “staff shortages” are artificial and could be ameliorated by paying nurses better and reducing the money spent on agencies.
Philmo
Having supported the headline, I have to confess to have benefitted from an outstanding outcome (my NHS optician’s words) following cataract ops on both eyes, executed by a Canadian business contracted with NHS.
What really rankled was that most of the staff were “bank” staff, who normally would work directly for NHS.
Why is it beyond the whit of NHS to set up teams, if necessary in similar leased premises, to address such routine high demands in certain specialisms and save the undoubtedly high profit flowing offshore from UK, milking the NHS of much needed funds?
Why do NHS trusts find it irresistible to roll-over and kow-tow to Jeremy Hunt’s greedy private profit ideology?
David Swain
On the aniversary of Clem Atlee’s landslide, which created our NHS we must do something to prevent the tories stealing it. Our NHS was set up with OUR money, and it is OUR NHS. We cannot stand by while the tories steal it for their own ends.
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Lawman
I can only endorse previous comments.
The sale of NHS Professionals should be stopped. If appropriate, Labour should announce now that we shall buy it back at the same cost minus any money stripped out by the buyer.
More generally, the involvement of the private sector in the NHS should be reviewed. Unless there is demonstrable benefit, it should be stopped and reversed.
This is one example of the hard line policy of the Conservative government. There will be much work to do after the next election.
Eileen
I have paid into the NHS for over 50 years as do all the people in the UK
The NHS is ours and not the governments to sell. We want Labour to stop the privatisation and take back our NHS when they are voted in.