How private sector can help revive NHS

HEALTH Secretary Steve Barclay’s decision to make more use of private providers to cut NHS waiting lists is both welcome and, to all but the most ideologically blinkered, eminently sensible.

After all, if you have been waiting 18 months in acute pain for a hip or knee replacement, are you really going to quibble about where and by whom you are treated?

Part of the Government’s broader NHS recovery strategy, the idea is to set up 13 new community diagnostic centres – eight of them privately run – offering scans and other pre-operative tests.

This builds on existing use of the independent sector, which currently provides around 6 per cent of all NHS care.

So what is Labour’s position on this enhancement of public- private partnership? Health spokesman Wes Streeting is apparently all for it. Indeed, he attacked the Government yesterday for not bringing it about sooner.

Which is interesting, given that less than four years ago both he and his leader, Sir Keir Starmer, stood on a manifesto which promised to ‘end and reverse’ privatisation within the NHS.

The big healthcare think-tanks are rather cooler on Mr Barclay’s plan. The Nuffield Trust says there is a risk the NHS would be left with only the most complex cases without the capacity to deal with them.

But isn’t that the whole point? Use the private hospitals to help clear the backlog of minor operations, so the NHS can concentrate on the more serious cases.

How can that be anything but a relief to hard-pressed hospital staff? (Those who are not on strike, that is.)

The sad truth is that Labour and most of the medical establishment are instinctively hostile to any private involvement in the NHS, preferring to pour ever more cash into an unreformed system that is cracking at the seams. A waiting list of 7.5million is hardly a ringing endorsement of the status quo.

The Covid vaccine miracle showed how the dynamism of the private sector can supercharge the development and delivery of new drugs. If the ideologues can swallow their prejudices, it could have the same galvanising effect on the NHS.