NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation

Rosie Duffield Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield (Canterbury) (Lab)]

A few weeks ago, my local NHS trust in east Kent announced that more than 1,000 employees—more than 800 Serco employees and more than 200 NHS employees—working in cleaning, catering, estates and facilities will now be employed by an arm’s length management organisation.

Most of us in this House will be familiar with ALMOs, but for those watching, listening and reading about them for the first time, although ALMOs may sound a bit like that well-known cuddly Muppets character, they are nowhere near as fun. This is not “Toy Story” but Tory story, a story of endless austerity and endless cuts to our vital and much-loved health and public services.

ALMOs have become a mechanism by which primarily local authorities, but now it seems NHS trusts too, can avoid responsibility by keeping things such as housing departments and cleaning facilities at arm’s length—away from too much scrutiny, and away from the managers and councillors whose jobs might depend on keeping themselves as far away as possible from that scrutiny.

[Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Staff in Bradford have real concern about the plans to create a wholly owned company that could see 300 members of staff at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust transferred out of the NHS, creating a two-tier workforce. Does she agree that we need to keep our health service, in the words of Unison’s campaign, 100% NHS?

[Rosie Duffield]

Absolutely. I was just about to speak about Unison, which is my union.

Leading unions have called the move in my local NHS trust—the East Kent Hospitals University NHS Foundation Trust—a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and fear, with good reason, that workers’ conditions, including pay, will be eroded. I know many of those workers personally and they include some of my friends. The unions are right: workers’ conditions will be eroded, and it is already happening in other public services across Kent.

The Conservative-run Kent County Council, for instance, has introduced another ALMO called the Education People. Educational psychologists currently working directly for the council are being transferred to be employed by the Education People. The terms and conditions being offered by the ALMO to new educational psychologists are significantly worse than existing terms and conditions for those employed by the county, so no new educational psychologists have been recruited for Kent. We already have a serious shortage.

Of course, Kent County Council is doing that because central Government have starved it of funds and, perhaps because it is the same shade of blue, it is too timid to make that big a noise about things, so I will do it instead: Conservative central Government cuts are reducing our ability to care for people properly. In my constituency, the local NHS is potentially doing the same by setting up an ALMO to make yet more cuts by stealth. More money, less responsibility.

My union, Unison, represents nearly half a million healthcare staff employed in the NHS. That is one in every 60 or so working adults in one sector in the UK represented by one union standing up with one voice against injustice.

In Canterbury, rooms at the once thriving city hospital can now be found stacked with old equipment, and staff tell me that whole wings of old, neglected hospitals, such as the Buckland in Dover, lie abandoned, underused and under-occupied while waiting rooms in our not-so-local accident and emergency departments remain rammed. In Canterbury, services that were removed “temporarily” in 2017 look likely never to return to those old buildings. Proposals are afoot for a new hospital, but it simply will not be built if the central Government funding is not there to fill it. I am the only Labour MP in Kent and, as such, I am proud to make a loud noise about and stand up against the Conservative cuts that have caused vital hospital services to disappear in my county in recent years.

Things need to change drastically, and the new university medical school in Canterbury will be part of that much-needed change. If someone in my constituency is sick, they currently have to travel a long way to Ashford or Margate to get the emergency care they need.

Combine an underfunded NHS with a South East Coast Ambulance Service in special measures, and we have the ingredients for chaos. Chaos and a lot of sadness are apparent in all the letters I receive from constituents about the NHS week in, week out. Members will get the idea. The funding is not there, so the services have gone.

[Helen Whately]

I have a question about what the hon. Lady said regarding the loss of services at Canterbury Hospital. She and I both oppose that. Does she acknowledge that services were lost under a Labour Government?

[Rosie Duffield]

I agree that services started to be cut under a Labour Government, but they have got so much worse that our hospital is now underused, unusable and unrecognisable.

Madam Deputy Speaker, you will hear the same thing repeatedly from my concerned Labour colleagues this afternoon. The impact of austerity on our health service has been truly dreadful. Trusts are beginning to look to PFIs to keep walls from crumbling, and the desire for a short-term fix has meant that private companies, such as Virgin, Serco and Spire, have stepped in, especially near me in Kent, to profit from sickness, which is fundamentally abhorrent.

So much must change. The privatisation of the NHS and supporting services must be stopped and funding must be fully restored to the levels it was at under the last Labour Government. If Conservative Members continue to erode our health service and encourage private companies to step in to fill in the gaps, there will be little left when they finally realise what they have done. With so many pieces given away, the NHS jigsaw will certainly never look the same again.

Labour Members are constantly accused of running down, criticising and putting down our health service. The fact is that we are telling the truth about the urgent state of our broken NHS, which is staffed by amazing, dedicated and selfless people who deserve so much better from this Government.