YP Letters: Threat to NHS isn't EU but creeping privatisation at home

NHS campaigners are growing increasingly concerned over the debate around the NHS in the EU referendum debate.

Each side claims its position will best protect the Health Service. It is hard to decide on the merits of the arguments, when facts seem in short supply and the issues being talked about are so complex. It’s very important to get things right when the NHS is currently undergoing major restructuring.

Rachel Reeves, MP for Leeds West, said the TTIP agreement would not lead to the widespread privatisation of the NHS (The Yorkshire Post, April 6). This is both true and false! The concern over TTIP is that it will “lock in” the privatisation that already exists in the NHS, not that it will create privatisation. That’s been done by successive governments right here in the UK since 1990.

There is more privatisation in the NHS than you might think. The NHS Supply Chain, for example, is run by German company DHL.

The now- infamous PFI deals not only create huge ongoing debts for the NHS, but the ownership of the hospitals themselves lies with the PFI consortium, not the NHS. The cost is eye watering.

It is estimated that for £11bn spent to build hospitals with PFI the NHS will have to make leaseback payments of nearly £80bn. The annual payments are creating huge deficits for hospital trusts, costing up to 20 per cent of their annual budget in the worst cases.​

When the Public Accounts Committee investigated HSBC’s tax avoidance scheme which had been managed for them by PwC, they found that the ownership of some of our hospitals and schools were in those accounts.

The PFIs have been sold and resold on the derivatives market. The Committee recommended that PwC should be banned from Government contracts for what they described as industrial-scale tax avoidance.

You might think that these services aren’t actually direct care, but many others are. Your GP may work for a company like Virgin or Care UK and may send you for tests carried out by companies like In-health. Your GP may refer you to a hospital for surgery – perhaps performed in one of the privately-run treatment centres. Or you might go to a privately-run urgent care clinic within an NHS hospital.

All these services will be badged with the NHS logo and you won’t be able to tell the difference. In or out of the EU.

If Ms Reeves thinks hers is the natural party of the NHS, she should pay more attention to what is actually happening to it.