Labour Sold The NHS

Many people believe that NHS Privitisation began with the introduction of the Health and Social Care Act 2012; the Act was spearheaded by Conservative Secretary of State for Health, Lord Andrew Lansley. Lord Lansley had also been identified as accepting a £21k donation from the chairman of Care UK, a company likely to benefit greatly from the increase in the use of private health providers within the NHS.

As concerning as that sounds, the truth is that the NHS privitisation had already begun under the previous Labour Government.

Back in 2006 under the Labour 'Minister of State for Health', Baron Norman Reginald Warner, NHS privitisation was already on the cards as their £64bn NHS privatisation plan was revealed, and there were also reports of a London hospital outsourcing surgical work to a private firm despite fears it could "give that company enormous leverage to launch a takeover bid to run the whole hospital." A Department of Health spokesman under the Labour Government stated: ""Primary Care Trusts will take responsibility for securing the best possible healthcare for their patients by commissioning services from a range of providers, including the independent and voluntary sector."

In 2009, under Labour PM Gordon Brown, the 'Principles and Rules of Cooperation and Competition (PRCC)' was introduced which sought to "liberate the NHS" and "set out the Government’s strategy for the NHS including the commitment that, wherever relevant, patients should have a choice of any willing provider that meets NHS standards, within NHS prices". This allowed private companies to lobby for NHS contracts and provide healthcare services as long as they were on par with nationalised healthcare pricing and quality of care.

It seems somewhat ironic that now Labour are banging the drum about preventing the privitisation of the NHS as their keystone policy when it seems it was them who first got the ball rolling and put frameworks in place to facilitate it's privitisation?

Part of me also has to wonder if the NHS issues are partly due to the massive population growth since it was formed in 1948. We now have over an additional 16 million people in the country. It's inevitable that unless the working population paying taxes grows in direct proportion to the demands on the NHS, and economic growth that stimulates business growth and associated taxable revenue, there will be a skill and fiscal deficit, and subsequently an expanding blackhole.