NHS cash wasted on private contracts

WE WERE told that allowing private companies to compete for contracts to deliver NHS services would improve quality of care and push down costs.

But it’s been an expensive disaster and resulted in an inferior system. Quite how ludicrous the situation is was demonstrated this week in reports that Virgin Care, part of Richard Branson’s empire, had threatened to sue the NHS after losing out on a contract to provide a three-year, £82 million deal covering health visitors, school nurses and occupational therapy in Surrey.

The cases have now been settled and are ‘confidential’ but it seems one local health authority’s liability was £328,000.

I feel sick to the pit of my stomach that while blind or crippled elderly people are being denied cataract surgery or a knee operation, bully-boy companies such as Virgin Care are suing the NHS. And why are the terms confidential, when it’s our money being paid out?

Competition was supposed to be about patient choice. But what we’ve got isn’t the market in the true capitalist sense. We can’t choose where we go for these services: they are delivered by whoever wins the contract, making whatever promises.

If we’re going to open up health care to the market, then at least do it properly, rather than handing out whopping amounts of public cash to corporations with a captive consumer base.

It’s a scandal that the political classes allowed this to happen and the internal market must be abandoned. It’s a dangerous festering wound which may prove fatal to the NHS.