NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation — House of Commons, 2018-05-23
Topic: Health
Maria Colette Caulfield (Conservative, Centre-right): I, too, want to use this opportunity to debunk the myth that the Conservative party wants to, or ever has wanted to, privatise the NHS. That is an image that the Labour party wants to portray, but the facts tell a different story. In the 70 years of the NHS, 43 of those years have been under a Conservative Government, so if privatising the NHS were the sole aim of the Conservative party, it would have been done by now. The NHS remains based on the three founding principles of meeting the needs of everyone, being free at the point of use, and being based on clinical need, not ability to pay. However, facts do not often matter to the Labour party I was at a meeting at the weekend of more than 200 GPs who were desperate for the politics to be taken out of the NHS. They welcome the Government’s talk of a long-term settlement and of taking the NHS out of the political cycle. That puts fear into the heart of Labour because it would mean that the NHS would come first, not the motives of the Labour party If Labour Members were honest with themselves, they would recall the history of the last Labour Government, who did more for privatisation in the NHS than anyone before or since. In 1999, within two years of coming to power, the Labour Government set up market structures in the NHS to create choice and competition, with hospitals starting to charge by price per episode to compete with the private sector. That is Labour’s record on privatisation in the NHS. In 2003, they set up foundation trusts so that hospitals could be free from the constraints of the NHS and run like a business. That is Labour’s record of privatisation in the NHS. Also in 2003, they introduced independent sector treatment centres—private companies set up to provide wholly NHS elective procedures. That is Labour’s record of privatisation in the NHS Some 84% of PFI projects were started under Labour. Although they built £11.8 billion-worth of hospitals, the cost to the NHS is £79 billion over 31 years. In 2009, the Labour Government introduced "any qualified provider", which we have heard about this afternoon, allowing the private sector to undertake NHS work. That is Labour’s true record of privatising the NHS. The King’s Fund analysis on the Labour Government found that by the time they left office, the NHS in England was operating more like a market, with half of elective patients being offered a choice of the private sector. The culture of the NHS had changed from one of collaboration to one of competition I am not against the involvement of the private sector in the NHS. As a research nurse, I worked with many multinational pharma companies setting up joint research studies that gave NHS patients access to drugs long before they were available on the NHS and access to equipment that was paid for by pharma companies and left in perpetuity to the NHS Labour Members lecture us on privatisation in the NHS, but the last time they were in government, they wanted to close the Princess Royal in Haywards Heath to patients in my constituency. When we were missing Government targets and breast cancer patients were not getting their treatment under the last Labour Government, did they listen to the breast surgeons in my unit who said, "Give us an extra theatre and we can deliver it."? No, they spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on performance management consultants, time and motion studies, brainstorming sessions and patient pathway mapping. At the end of that six-month process, they told us that the solution was to have more theatre sessions, which the surgeons had told them in the first place This is not just my experience; the British public know that the NHS is safe in Conservative hands. That is why, for 43 of the last 70 years, they have put the Conservative party in charge of the NHS, and long may that continue.