£36m of new NHS contracts tendered in six weeks

The Labour Party has revealed that 19 new NHS contracts worth £36 million have been put out to tender since mid-February.

The party has slammed Health Secretary Matt Hancock for proceeding ‘full steam ahead with NHS privatisation’, with the new House of Commons Library analysis showing that a total of 21 NHS contracts worth £127 million are currently out to tender. This includes a £91 million contract to run an NHS 111/Clinical Assessment Service in the South East, which has been out to tender since 10 February 2019.

In 2017/18, £8.8 billion of the health service budget went to independent sector providers - a 50 per cent increase compared with 2009/10. Recent Tory endorsements have included Hancock promoting Access MyDentist, a private firm profiting from patients who cannot access an NHS dentist due to cuts, and Babylon, a private healthcare company which has been criticised for ‘cherry picking’ fit, young and health patients and financially destabilising traditional GP practice.

Labour’s Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary Jonathan Ashworth is now demanding that Hancock prioritises ending privatisation of the NHS by keeping these contracts in public hands- instead of ‘working on his own Tory leadership bid’.

Ashworth said: “Since the Tories’ wasteful reorganisation of the NHS we’ve seen privatisation after privatisation of NHS services, breaking up integrated care, costing the taxpayer and leaving a poor quality service for patients. Labour will bring an end to this profiteering in our NHS and restore our health service to public hands.

“Tory privatisation will be killed stone dead under a Labour government and we’ll bring forward the necessary legislation to reverse the Health and Social Care Act and reinstate a publicly provided NHS in our first Queen’s Speech.

“A few weeks ago the Health Secretary told MPs there would be no privatisation on his watch and yet we’ve seen cancer PET-CT scanning services in Oxford privatised, and today we’re revealing another £36 million worth of contracts put out to tender in the last few weeks. Rather than focusing on his own personal manoeuvrings for the Tory leadership, Mr Hancock should be true to his word and now block these latest NHS privatisation proposals.”