Privatising the NHS

Labour have for many years raised the scare story that the Tories are planning to privatise the NHS, whether overtly or via the back door. Today I read that Labour are about to go down the same route. The Brown Broadcasting Corporation have taken a softly-softly approach to this story, first by making their headline stories about Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton and secondly by making the report as anodyne as possible.

The article starts:

"Private firms could be drafted in to run struggling NHS hospitals and primary care trusts in England, ministers are to announce.

Executives from companies like Bupa or from better-performing NHS trusts could be used to replace existing bosses.

Ministers say it is one of a range of options aimed at improving performance, but insist no NHS assets or staff would be transferred to private companies.

The British Medical Association said it had "grave concerns" about the plans."

and also includes the following:

"The Department of Health said although private firms would be allowed to provide management services at NHS trusts, front-line staff would remain NHS employees.

Officials said it was not expected that "huge numbers" of NHS trusts would be affected.

It is thought about 20 trusts labelled weak by a Healthcare Commission report last autumn could be identified as candidates. "

The BBC also quote Ben Bradshaw, one of the least impressive Labour Ministers and there is a long list to choose from, as saying:

"there may be examples where no NHS hospital is interested in taking over a failing hospital, or where local NHS managers think that in order to have more competition and choice for people locally that bringing in a private manager on a franchise arrangement will be the most sensible idea.

"Our experience is that you can when you bring in, not just the private sector, but the voluntary sector, help drive up standards in local health areas." "

Near the end of the article, further on than most people will read (!), the BBC finally print the adverse comments:

"The BMA warned the scheme amounted effectively to privatising parts of the NHS and could lead to "fragmentation" within the health service.

And Geoff Martin, head of campaigns at Health Emergency, predicted there would be an "almighty row" over the plans.

He added: "The government's suicide mission to alienate core supporters takes another leap with this effort to privatise the NHS on a scale that even Margaret Thatcher would have balked at."

Professor Allyson Pollock, head of the Centre for International Public Health Policy at the University of Edinburgh, said: "Bringing private management in will simply accelerate the process of privatisation of services which will have catastrophic effects for the patients and the public at large.

"It will mean less care for everyone, and more money for profits and shareholders.""

The BBC article concludes:

"The private sector has already been given an important role in the NHS in England. The government spent heavily on privately-run hospitals and treatment centres to cut waiting times for operations, and private firms are now starting to get a foothold in general practice. "

Can you imagine how the BBC would have covered a Conservative government scheme to bring private expertise into the NHS, somehow I think it might have been written rather more robustly, with the negative comments nearer the top of the article and more prominently signposted. I look forward to hearing, during any future general election campaign, the first Labour Minister or MP accuse the Tories of wanting to privatise the NHS and the response they get.