An excellent conference on The Pandemic and Privatisation brought together nearly 500 campaigners on February 25 to think about how to combat further outsourcing and privatisation in the NHS. Recordings of the platform speakers, transcripts and the 24-page Briefing Pack produced by The Lowdown are available HERE.
Expert speakers set out the most recent evidence of how outsourcing has led to worse services and fragmentation and stood as an obvious obstruction to the need to integrate care services. The phoney value of the private sector healthcare providers was explained.
The disgrace of tax dodging subcos might be coming to an end after fierce resistance, but the threats remained. Poor treatment and conditions for staff outsourced to the private sector are one more symptom of the years of austerity-funding forcing NHS organisations to look for cost cutting not service improvements.
Speakers set out how years of evidence demonstrates the failure of outsourcing of clinical services and the nonsense of the attempts to treat our healthcare as a market and to pretend competition leads to improvement when our health is not a commodity.
John Lister from Health Campaigns Together shared his 37 years of experience of opposing the outsourcing of government funded services. There were recent successes, but the nature of outsourcing was changing and areas such as management consultancy, pathology and information management were all draining resources out of the public sector and into private profits. Investment in the public sector was woefully inadequate and made outsourcing inevitable.
John suggested campaigning needs better arguments, new lines of attack, and new and different campaigns because contracts for new services were being given to private companies without the transfer of NHS staff that has previously focused resistance and solidarity.
John’s 10 Ps (“Prohibiting Profiteering Providers and Prioritising Public Provision Prevents Piss Poor Performance”) showed his argument that all tools could be valuable including ridicule and sarcasm!
Responding shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth thanked all those who campaign across the country. He pointed out that the government obsession with the illusory superiority of the private sector led to £billions wasted through crony contracting and the elevation of totally unqualified people from private sector backgrounds into key positions.
Public anger at crony contracting is growing and coincides with the emergence of government proposals, backed by NHS England, that allow private sector providers to influence how funding is allocated and contracts awarded and this was totally unacceptable.
Other speakers warned that removing the oversight that competitive tendering required might actually lead to more contracts being awarded to friends and family without adequate scrutiny! While the proposals to repeal the worst of the dreadful Lansley Health and Social Care Act would be an improvement there would still be the possibility of further outsourcing, and no clear plan to reverse previous deals!
A united position in responding to the White Paper and the new Bill will be essential. Key requirements would have to include:-
- Investment in NHS capacity to avoid any need or temptation to use private providers to provide NHS funded services – if necessary acquiring private facilities no longer viable.
- No further framework contracts for private provision of NHS funded acute clinical services other than under emergency provisions
- A commitment to reverse existing outsourcing arrangements
- Return of the complete prohibition of any two tier workforce arrangements
- Complete transparency over awarding contracts and an end to any claims of commercial confidentiality to hide business cases, etc.
- A requirement to prove that the public sector could not provide what is required before any competitive tendering process was considered, and a ban on any outsourcing of public funded services to companies which do not pay their taxes or employ staff on decent terms and conditions
- Building capacity for the NHS to aggressively manage contracts with private healthcare providers using enforceable penalties for poor performance.
- Enforceable recharging of NHS costs incurred by private provider failures
- A clear statement that in any process the NHS is the preferred provider
- Removal of all conflicts of interest, with private providers excluded from any body which allocates public resources or awards contracts.
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