NHS Outsourcing and Privatisation

Anneliese Dodds Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately). She spoke with characteristic gusto, even if—I am sorry to say it—I did not agree with a single word she said.

I want to underline how privatisation is sapping resources from our NHS, in Oxford East and elsewhere in the country, at the very time it needs them more than ever, because of demographic change and the knock-on impact of cuts elsewhere in our public services. Oxford has particular problems with staff recruitment and retention because of the very high cost of living and the historically high number of EU staff in our local NHS, who are under threat from the Government’s shambolic approach to Brexit. Too few staff for high demand has led to clear reductions—that is right: reductions—in patient care in my local area.

Between January and March this year, 273 non-urgent surgical operations were postponed in my city. Rather than the response being additional resources for the local trust that was working so hard in trying to provide a decent service, in the topsy-turvy world of this Government, my trust lost £1 million because of what happened during that period. Meanwhile, Virgin Care has taken £1.5 million away from our NHS through court action against it. That is an absolute disgrace.

The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who, sadly, is no longer in the Chamber, wilfully misconstrued the impact of privatisation. The clue is in the word: it means privatising—making private—something that was public before. We are not talking about the great British biomedical industry, which has always been private. In fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), the shadow Health Secretary, came to my constituency to see an operation this very week. In fact, the innovation that is promoted by that industry would be aided by an end to inappropriate privatisation. If we stopped sucking out resources and putting them into the pockets of profiteers, they could be spent on the high-quality healthcare and technologies of the future that would actually benefit patients.

The delays in operations in Oxford have become substantially worse over time. Between the end of February 2017 and February 2018, the acute hospital trust had to postpone 952 non-urgent operations; 536 were postponed in the previous year. As the situation has worsened, it has become harder and harder to establish whose responsibility it is. It is no longer the Health Secretary’s responsibility, because, following the Lansley reforms, he has no overall responsibility for the NHS. Oxfordshire’s joint health overview and scrutiny committee, which is meant to oversee services, has just decided to hold many of its meetings in secret, so the public do not even know what is going on at that level.

There are constant arguments about who is responsible for the provision of various essential services. As we all know, breastfeeding support is incredibly important to both babies and mums, but my local clinical commissioning group and my local council cannot agree whose responsibility it is to pay for it, so it is not being delivered properly. That is happening throughout the country. Of course, those services used to be available in children’s centres, but we do not have them any more in Oxfordshire since they were got rid of.

The crisis in Oxford’s NHS has been intensified by all the cuts in social care. Even with all those pressures, however, local NHS staff are working incredibly hard. We are not scaremongering when those staff are coming to our surgeries in tears. When they are telling us how much pressure they are under, it is our duty as parliamentarians to stand up and say “Enough is enough: an end to privatisation and an end to cuts.”