Privatisation of NHS Services

Debate between Paula Sherriff and Faisal Rashid

Monday 23rd April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) on bringing the petition forward for debate.

I thank the 237,462 individuals who signed the petition and gave us the opportunity to raise the issue of NHS privatisation, which is important for many of my constituents. I know that the same is true for all Members present. The petition was signed by 442 of my constituents, and I was proud to join 200 of them outside Warrington Hospital in February to protest against NHS privatisation. The level of public concern about this issue shows just how important the NHS is to our country and its citizens.

The NHS is our most sacred and treasured institution. It was founded 70 years ago on the fundamental principle that everyone is entitled to free healthcare, and it does not discriminate on the basis of wealth, gender or race —it does so only on the basis of need. Every day, thousands of lives are saved by NHS staff at NHS hospitals, and we are extremely grateful for their extraordinarily hard work. The Government have a duty to protect the NHS and its staff, and to ensure that they can continue to provide world-class healthcare to the British public, free at the point of use.

We all use the NHS, and we all have a vested interest in ensuring that it is run effectively and efficiently, but let us be clear: privatisation and outsourcing do not do that.

Privatisation forces NHS hospitals to outsource vital services to private companies, which are often more interested in making a profit than helping sick people. That is a fundamental conflict of interest. The NHS has a duty to its patients, whereas private companies have a duty to their shareholders, but shareholders care about profits, and often the only way to make a profit is by cutting corners. That compromises the quality of care.

The Government claim that private sector outsourcing is good for the NHS and that it allows patients access to treatments based on the best quality of care and value for money.

[Paula Sherriff]

My experience is that we used to offer one-stop surgery shops, so that when patients came in they could have minor surgery on the same day. We were stopped from doing that. Patients had to come in on two occasions, and we were told explicitly by the management of Virgin Care that it was because it generated two tariffs, and made more profit. I should be interested to hear the view of those who defend the privatisation of healthcare about that.

[Faisal Rashid]

That supports my point, and is a great example.

The Government view of outsourcing does not reflect the reality of privatisation. Did patients receive the best quality of care from the private firm Circle when it took over management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital in 2012, making it the first privately run NHS hospital, only to withdraw from its contract two years later after it was placed in special measures by the Care Quality Commission because it had found serious failings in its emergency and medical care services? What about the 2013 Public Accounts Committee report on Serco’s running of GP out-of-hours care in Cornwall, which accused the private company of bullying employees, providing a short-staffed and substandard service, and manipulating data to hide the truth? Were patients receiving the best quality of care then? What about the imposition of financial penalties on the same company by NHS commissioners in Suffolk in 2014, after it missed key targets in its community health services contract? In 2012 Harmoni, a private provider of NHS out-of-hours GP services, having put in place an aggressive cost-cutting agenda, faced allegations from senior doctors that its service in London was so short-staffed that its patients were unsafe. I could recount many more examples of failed healthcare privatisation, but we do not have time.

The Government also claim that outsourcing allows the NHS to save money, but that is not necessarily true. The process by which private companies bid for contracts allows them effectively to cherry-pick the most profitable forms of treatment—usually low-risk elective surgeries. That allows the private sector to benefit from the predictable, and usually low, cost. That is far from providing the best quality of care for patients.

Why, then, do the Government insist on continued NHS privatisation? Since 2010, under successive Conservative-led Governments, the private sector’s involvement in NHS services has more than doubled. Evidence shows that that has seldom made the situation any better for staff or patients. The NHS is in crisis. Chronic underfunding compounded by a growing and ageing population has put an unbearable strain on the NHS and resulted last year in yet another winter crisis. My local NHS Trust, the Warrington and Halton Hospitals Trust, is on track for a forecast financial deficit of £16.8 million, and in December 2017 only 73.8% of A&E patients were seen within four hours, which is well below the target. Yet the Government’s only answer to the crisis is more privatisation.

Let me review the facts. Privatisation is bad for quality, budgets and the NHS. More privatisation is not going to help the NHS. The only way to help it is to give it the funding that it needs and that it has been telling us it needs. If we truly love the NHS, we will stop privatisation.