New NHS privatisation attack
WORKERS, DEC 2005 ISSUE
A further tranche of NHS specialist agencies are now under threat of privatisation from health secretary Patricia Hewitt. An organisation called the Business Service Authority is to be created to take over the functioning of the Dental Practice Board, the NHS Logistics Authority, the NHS Pensions Agency, the Prescription Pricing Authority and the NHS Counter Fraud and Security Management service.
The proposed BSA will be responsible for procuring and commissioning the work of these specialist NHS agencies from the private sector. Thousands of NHS jobs are at risk of redundancy or enforced transfer to the private sector. The transfer will be advertised across the EU and the United States. This is the third NHS privatisation Hewitt has proposed since the May general election. As in the other cases, consultation or negotiation with the trade unions has been minimal or non-existent. Health trade unions were advised at a ministerial briefing that the changes were a fait accompli.
Though Hewitt has done a body-swerve over earlier privatisation initiatives, such as the Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS review announced in July, numerous Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities are continuing to privatise. Oxfordshire is planning to contract out all its NHS management structures at PCT level; a pilot for a three-year management system has been announced and was to be advertised in the EU and USA. Thames Valley SHA is rumoured to be looking to contract out all funding of health provision to front runner United Health, a US private conglomerate.
But mounting opposition, primarily from Unison and other NHS trade unions, GPs and even the Tory County Council, has forced the government to put the plan on hold. Hewitt speaks of "reform" and "contestability" to disguise her real intention: to turn the clock back to pre-NHS days through privatisation and the profit-driven market.
• For 15 years health professionals, trade unionists and local supporters have been campaigning for a new maternity and children's hospital at St James Hospital in Leeds. Finally in 2004 the government agreed to the hospital, in principle – for 2012. Twenty-two years to get a new maternity hospital. Two months for the decision to be put at risk by the government's Commissioning a Patient-Led NHS review.
The Department of Health has 'guaranteed' £45 million of work for each of the next five years to a private centre being built in nearby Wakefield, financed by robbing Leeds and other acute hospitals of money promised but not committed. St James has already lost £14 million from its budget after the government switched local Primary Care Trust contracts to the private sector, so perhaps the £230 million agreed for the maternity unit is about to become another worthless government "principle".