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Emails reveal overseas private health firms circling NHS PDF Print E-mail
In the News
Sunday, 04 September 2011 18:59

In case you missed it, see this Guardian article about ConDem government plans to hand over up to 20 hospitals to foreign private health companies:

Excerpt:

Concerns that ministers want more private involvement will be strengthened by details of email exchanges involving senior health officials about handing the management of 10 to 20 NHS hospitals to international private companies. The emails, which were made public following a freedom of information request and were obtained by non-profit-making investigations company Spinwatch, show that officials have been planning since late last year to bring in international companies. This is despite repeated insistences by both David Cameron and Nick Clegg that there will be no privatisation of the NHS. On 16 May, Cameron said: "Let me make clear: there will be no privatisation." Clegg said: "Yes to reform of the NHS, but no to the privatisation of the NHS."

One of the emails released by the department shows that officials at the private sector firm McKinsey, which advises ministers, were in active discussion about bringing in overseas firms to take over up to 20 hospitals in return for contracts running into hundreds of millions of pounds. An email to Ian Dalton, head of provider development at the Department of Health, who is heavily involved in the reform programme, in November last year talks about "interest in new solution for 10-20 hospitals but starting from a mindset of one at a time with various political constraints".

The emails show that McKinsey is acting as a broker between the department and "international players" that are bidding to run the NHS. The documents even lay out some of the conditions required by "international hospital provider groups" for running NHS hospitals. "International players can do an initiative if 500 million revenue [is] on the table." They also need to have "a free hand on staff management". The NHS would be allowed to "keep real estate and pensions".

Lobbyists

See also this Spinwatch video about the army of Westminster-based lobbyists, think tanks and front organisations employed by the private health companies to push through the privatisation of the NHS:

NHS reform: Private health industry lobbying tour part 1

 

NHS reform: Private health industry lobbying tour part 2

Last Updated on Sunday, 04 September 2011 19:13
 
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