The NHS and Social Care Act, introduced on 1st April,  continues the trend of the last 20 years, of promoting a ‘market’ approach to providing NHS services. Creating a system for contracting for services, where all NHS bodies are billing each other, diverts funding from front line services. It cultivates a bureaucratic, managerial and target culture. Bidding for service contracts invokes huge costs, ultimately borne by the tax payer.

Plans to force Commissioning Bodies to open up health services to the private sector contravene all previous assurances and were buried in secondary regulations. Under huge public pressure the Government had to withdraw and rewrite these regulations. The revised version now cites integration and co-operation as reasons why anti-competition might be in the interests of patients.  But the regulations make clear that competition is the norm and anti competition has to be justified, rather than the other way round. 

Cooperation and integration is better for patient care. It promotes the ethos of a ‘seamless service’. Opening up the NHS to competition will allow private contractors to ‘cherry pick’ the most lucrative services, fragment patient services and further destabilise NHS providers. The regulations will create rights for commercial providers to promote their business interests and could force governments to compensate private providers should services be returned to public provision. 

Reorganisation of the NHS has been imposed at a cost of £3billion, at a time of massive cuts across London and increased demand, especially for maternity, mental health and dementia services. Much of the NHS’s financial difficulties are due to loss of funding to the private sector which has made huge profits as a result of market driven reforms - notably PFI repayments (£258.6billion in 2010 and rising) and consultancy and legal fees to help manage the market.

The Green Party is opposed to privatisation and believes the NHS should remain a properly funded, publicly provided service, accountable to the public with local representation. Which is  why  we will be supporting the Anti NHS Privatisation and Cuts Rally on 18th May in London.

Yours faithfully,

Ryan Coley on behalf of
Kingston Green Party