Privatisation of NHS Services

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Perhaps we should start with what we agree on, which seems to me fundamental for all of us in Parliament: the NHS is more precious than perhaps any institution except our monarchy and democracy. We all agree that it is and should remain a public institution available to everyone, no matter what they earn, and free at the point of delivery. We absolutely agree on those tenets of the NHS and the health services that our constituents benefit from. However, there are also things that we disagree on.

I suggest that the debate has frankly more to do with imminent local elections in London and elsewhere than with the health of the national health service. It is at least the fourth time in my short eight years in Parliament that the left, or some of the left, have tried to weaponise the NHS. When I hear Labour MPs talking as the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) did about the “dismantling” of the NHS, I say to them that if the Conservatives had ever intended to privatise the NHS it would have been done by now, for the Conservatives have been the party of government for much longer than Labour since 1948. Secondly, privatisation of the NHS has never been in a Conservative manifesto. I defy any Opposition Member to find a single Conservative Member of Parliament who would want it, although it is normally possible to find one MP to sign up to most things. There is a challenge to Labour MPs, and particularly to those new ones who have known only the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) as their leader. If anyone really believes that real privatisation is anything more than a fantasy threat, I ask them please to go and find a single Member of Parliament from the Conservative party Back Benches who would support it.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I have huge respect for the hon. Gentleman and have come to admire him over the years, but clearly he has not visited a hospital lately and seen privatised portering services, privatised catering services, privatised nurses being provided by privatised banks, privatised doctors being provided by privatised agencies, and patients being delivered by privatised hospital car services. I suggest he should pop down to Ealing Hospital while it is still standing. I will show him the true horror of privatisation. It is prevalent, endemic and everywhere.

[Richard Graham]

That is an interesting point, but the hon. Gentleman may not be aware that I volunteer in my local hospital, and have done for the past eight years. I have not only seen porters in action; I have worked alongside them—and ditto for a variety of wards. The situation he paints about what goes on in Ealing is completely different from what happens at the Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in my constituency, where those services are carried out by employees of the NHS—and will continue to be, whether they are in a subsidiary company or not—effectively and well. I pay tribute to all four of the NHS trusts in my constituency, one of which, Gloucestershire Care Services, received a good rating, alongside the already highly rated ²gether mental health trust. I shall put that issue to one side, but the hon. Gentleman is a distinguished Member of the House and knows better than to scaremonger about privatisation. Real privatisation is what happens in America, as he knows. It does not exist here in the United Kingdom.

The narrative today is, I am afraid, about scaremongering, with the favourite Labour bogeyman, privatisation, to the fore. There is one sentence from the petition that in a sense gives it away:

“Companies should not be profiteering from NHS contracts”.

The logic of that is that every single provider of equipment or services to the NHS, from pencils to EpiPens to imaging machinery to software, should do so at a loss. They should not. It is crucial that businesses make profits, invest and innovate for the future, reduce paperwork, increase scientific solutions to all sorts of difficult health issues and improve the life chances of our constituents. The opposite logic, of businesses making no money at all and going bankrupt, and the state trying to do everything, has been tested to death—literally—in both Russia and China. If Opposition Members, as socialists, want to understand why China has been so successful, I commend to them joining my all-party parliamentary China group, to visit China and understand what socialism with Chinese characteristics looks like and means.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

As I said, there are concerns. I have concerns: some of my constituents have difficulties. The overall quantum of healthcare funding—I will return to this at the end of my remarks—is putting pressure particularly on rural areas that I represent. We need to tackle a number of different issues. With regard to the future of healthcare funding, my perspective is similar to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham): we should be working on a cross-party basis to deliver the solutions.

In terms of private or public, the public are absolutely behind the point that they have no preference. A greater number of people express no preference, in terms of a private sector or public sector provider, as to who provides their healthcare. Yes, of course the public are massively in favour—89% are in favour—of a taxpayer-funded healthcare system, but on the question whether the care should be delivered by private or public providers, it is a very different picture.

[Stephen Pound]

The hon. Gentleman has been extremely generous in giving way. I am reluctant to wander too far down memory lane, but when the NHS and I were born at the same time, in July 1948—[Laughter.] Two great institutions, both in need of considerable support! The NHS was born out of compromise. I spent 10 years working in the Middlesex Hospital. We had a private patients wing. The entire GP facility within the NHS has been private. GPs have always been self-employed. There has been compromise. The issue is not the fact that there is a compromise and private practice within the NHS, but the fact that there is a creeping expansion of privatisation, which my constituents and, I would suggest, those of every right hon. and hon. Member here feel is corrosive to the heart of the NHS. Yes, there is privatisation within the NHS, but we have to stop it. We must not expand it. We must return to core principles.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

It is only corrosive if it is not in the patient’s interest. There are clear commissioning rules that it must be in the patient’s interest for this commissioning to take place. The key is what is right for the patient. I do not doubt that the hon. Gentleman may be right that some of the commissioning is wrong, but whether it is private or public should not be the overriding principle; it should be what is right for the patient.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Pound]

I respect the hon. Gentleman, but the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds North West (Alex Sobel) was about the added value brought by people who work in the NHS. When I was a porter for 10 years at the Middlesex Hospital, we finished at 10 o’clock on Saturday night and started again at 6 o’clock on Sunday morning. We worked a rotating three shift system.

The Middlesex Hospital is now a hole in the ground, but when I last went to see former colleagues from the ancillary staffs council, I was told about the agency workers who turn up to do a day’s shift. They have no emotional connection with the hospital, or any feeling for it, so they simply cannot make the same commitment. Surely the hon. Gentleman, who is far from being a fool—he is actually a humane man—recognises that some people bring an immense amount of added value by working for the NHS rather than for an agency that works for the NHS.

[Martin Vickers]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am not arguing for privatisation. I am arguing that privatising some services improves patient care, which is surely what we are all interested in.