Labour party will continue use of private contractors in the NHS
Sophie Arie
BMJ 2005;331:797
The UK Labour party is to push ahead with plans to extend
privatisation of the NHS, despite an overwhelming rejection
of the policy by delegates attending its annual conference
last week.
A motion that called for the suspension of all plans to
increase care provided by the private sector in the NHS won
backing from 71% of delegates at the conference.
David Prentis, leader of the public sector union Unison,
which tabled the motion, said the NHS should not be run on a
"fragmented basis," with different parts "competing for
patients." He accused the government, which plans to
outsource some secondary care to private treatment centres,
of "not learning from flawed Tory policies of the past" and
insisted that the plan was "simply not acceptable from our
Labour government."
However, the government indicated that it intends to
continue its efforts to give patients more choice, making it
a priority for its third term in office. The secretary of
state for health, Patricia Hewitt, told the conference that
spending just 1% of the total NHS budget would enable
independent treatment centres to carry out around 10% of NHS
operations by 2008 and so would ease waiting lists.
"This isn't privatisation," Ms Hewitt said. "We are not
selling off NHS hospitals." She argued that the NHS has
always made use of the private sector by contracting self
employed GPs who work on their own premises.
Frank Dobson, a former Labour health secretary and one of
more than 30 medical professionals, writers, and health
policy experts leading a campaign to "keep our NHS public" (
BMJ 2005;331: 713[Free Full Text], 1 Oct), warned that the
government was ignoring widespread concern in the medical
profession and among the public. "Large numbers of people
working in the NHS are very concerned at the government
franchising out cheap and easy operations on the healthy and
leaving the NHS to provide complex care to the unhealthy,"
he said.
Given the choice, Mr Dobson argued, most people would want a
top quality public health service within reasonable
distance. "Instead, people will be deprived of any say in
where they are treated, or to stay near home they will have
to go somewhere where they get inferior treatment."
Mr Dobson argued that improvements in the NHS had been
largely responsible for recent reductions in waiting lists,
not private sector involvement. He feared that operations
provided by the private sector would cost the taxpayer more
than those provided by the NHS. "Ultimately, a private
company's only obligation is to its shareholders," he said.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/331/7520/797
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