Labour’s NHS ten-year plan: new health centres are a vehicle for widespread privatisation

On 3 July, Labour Party PM Keir Starmer launched the NHS ten-year plan. This is centred on delivering neighbourhood health centres, instead of new hospitals. The idea is to provide cheaper care first in people’s homes if possible, then in these health centres if necessary and finally in hospitals if need be.

NHS ten-year plan: expanding privatisation

The thing is, the government states in the NHS ten-year plan launch document that it will:

develop a business case for the use of public private partnerships (PPPs) for neighbourhood health centres, ahead of a final decision at the autumn budget

It looks like the health centres may be an expansion of private provision of NHS services, marketed as ‘public private partnerships’. Indeed, Labour says that the move towards the NHS app will enable patients to:

choose their preferred provider, whether because it delivers the best outcomes, has the best feedback or is simply closer to home, through My Choices

One of the key benefits of publicly provided healthcare is that you can standardise the best care across the board through a sharing approach to the best practices. Rather than having a set of sub-standard competing firms offering fragmented care.

The NHS ten-year plan document also states that the government will:

continue to make use of private sector capacity to treat NHS patients where it is available and we will enter discussions with private providers to expand NHS provision in the most disadvantaged areas

Starmer has already announced that Labour will bring in 20% more private provision of NHS services. In January, Starmer said privatised services will provide an additional million appointments, scans, and operations a year.

Labour are continuing to ignore the fact that private provision of NHS services already costs the NHS £10m every week in profit. Paradoxically, the government aims to bring down NHS costs while expanding profiteering within the NHS.

Long waits under austerity

In Starmer’s speech on the NHS ten-year plan, he said:

let me tell you about Jane. At Christmas, she was taken to hospital with back pain. And the diagnosis was not good. She needed her gallbladder removed. Jane asked as you can imagine “how long will I have to wait”. And they said – “I’m sorry, but at the moment it could take up to ten months.” Yet – because we have speeded up electives, because we have speeded up appointments, by May – she was offered a private appointment, paid for by the NHS, as part of our plan. And now Jane is pain free. Five months – not ten.

The fact that Jane would have to wait ten months for an operation shows the dire state of the NHS. Successive governments have starved it of funding. The issue with private provision is that it diverts resources and staff away from the NHS, turning it into a more expensive service for the public purse.

The solution is to expand the NHS through public means. But these new health centres look like a vehicle for privatisation.

Featured image via the Canary