NHS (Private Sector)

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I wish I could allay the fears of those people, but when there is a proposal placed at the heart of the NHS for hospitals to devote half their facilities—their beds, their appointments—to private patients, how is it possible to give that guarantee to those patients, particularly when the Government are relaxing the waiting time standards that we did so much to establish in the NHS, with the two-week wait for cancer referrals and 18 weeks for elective operations, and a four-hour wait in A and E? How can we have that confidence when, effectively, the Government are taking those safeguards off the public and giving the green light for a massive expansion of private sector treatment in NHS hospitals?

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend have any answer to the question whether private providers with obligations to their shareholders will inevitably face a conflict if risk is offloaded to them when their responsibility to their shareholders is naturally to ensure the best possible financial outcome for them?

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this proposal brings that conflict right to the heart of the NHS. At the moment, NHS hospitals have a paramount and overriding duty to the treatment of NHS patients, but considering a health care system whereby services would be delivered through a series of commercial contracts brings that conflict of interest into the health care system—shareholders on the one hand, patients on the other. That is why there is such deep disquiet among health professions about these proposals. It is why those professions applied so much pressure last year, and the pause was ordered. It is why, I am afraid, they are still unhappy today—the Government have not addressed their concerns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lansley]

I have no knowledge of what the right hon. Lady describes. Let me remind her that those working in the NHS have a responsibility to disclose anything that that they think is to the detriment of their patients’ interests, and under legislation on public interest disclosure they have protection. I announced just before Christmas that in the latest contract for an enhanced advice line there should be a whistleblower advice line.

[Kate Green]

I note what the Secretary of State says about staff who have concerns being encouraged to express them, but in the case of Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, where a private company has just been commissioned to provide orthopaedic pain relief services, the staff had absolutely no knowledge that that commissioning was going on. How can he be sure that staff will be able to raise concerns when there is such a lack of transparency?

[Mr Lansley]

What the hon. Lady describes is precisely what has happened time and again under the legislation we inherited, which is not transparent. Primary care trusts were not accountable or transparent and an enormous amount of activity went on with tenders that involved the private sector and was not conducted in the way that we want, which is on the basis of a tariff and on the basis of which provider is best able to deliver the highest quality.

Let me deal with the first of the myths propagated by the right hon. Member for Leigh: that we have some kind of privatisation agenda. We do not. As I recollect, the only time any Government had a specific objective to increase the role of the private sector in the NHS was when he was a Minister, his hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) was a special adviser to the Department for Health and Patricia Hewitt was Secretary of State. That was when they were saying they wanted to increase the role of the private sector to 10% or 15%, and the Health and Social Care Bill contains specific provision not to allow such discrimination in favour of private providers in future.