Streeting just gave private healthcare a gift at the end of the Labour conference

Health secretary Wes Streeting has delivered many gifts to private healthcare. But the latest is the announcement that Streeting will not introduce VAT to private healthcare. This is a sector that is booming because successive governments have starved the NHS of funding.

More private healthcare means less public- not that Streeting cares

Logic determines that the more private healthcare a society has, the less public healthcare there can be. That’s because the UK has a certain amount of healthcare staff and resources. So the very existence of private healthcare takes those workers, infrastructure and technology away from public healthcare. And the amount taken away from the NHS increases as private healthcare expands.

Introducing VAT to private healthcare would be a piecemeal way to claw back some of those resources from privatisation and hand them to the NHS. But the government is failing to do even that.

It’s blatantly obvious that Nigel Farage is not the answer to issues such as this. That’s because he has advocated for doing away with the NHS altogether and bringing in insurance based healthcare. This would end the NHS being even free at the point of use, the cornerstone of modern British civilisation.

Rebalance towards the NHS

The Good Growth Foundation thinktank estimates that adding VAT to private acute healthcare could rebalance the economy away from the private sector and towards the public by more than £2bn. The thing is, private provision already treats around 10% of patients in the NHS and Keir Starmer is increasing this figure. That means the introduction of VAT to private healthcare would, in turn, increase some costs for the NHS, if those costs were passed on.

So it would be more beneficial to simply end the private provision of healthcare altogether, nationalise private healthcare and permanently lower costs for the NHS and patients.

Austerity, the NHS and the private healthcare boom

The value of the UK’s private healthcare market rose to a record £12.4bn in 2023, according to the report from LaingBuisson. That’s up by £1bn from 2022. This all represents resources and expertise taken away from the NHS.

The NHS also paid for £3.5bn of such private healthcare procedures because the government has withheld funding and investment in public healthcare.

Of the 1.3m procedures private healthcare carried out, the NHS funded just under 445,000. The profit from such private provision removes funds from the NHS budget. Analysis from We Own It found the NHS loses £10m a week to shareholders or £6.7bn since 2012.

Labour’s lack of funding, also inherited from the Conservatives, has key material impacts. The UK has a very low number of hospital beds, at 2.43 per 1,000 people. Meanwhile, France has over double with 5.73. And Germany (albeit with a higher GDP per person) has 7.82. The UK is also low on doctors per 1,000 people, at 3.2. Some of the highest are in Austria at 5.48 and Spain at 4.49.

Labour and Streeting should fully renationalise the NHS as Starmer initially pledged, but instead they are going in the opposite direction.

Featured image via the Canary