The Green Party holds that the profit motive should have no place in our health care – in any form of care
Natalie Bennett is a Green Party member of the House of Lords. She was leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2012-16.
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Perhaps because it is a continuing story of disaster, there’s few stories now also about the impact of privatisation, despite the level continuing to rise. In 2022 nearly 10 per cent of treatments for NHS patients, more than 2 million people, were provided by private companies, up from 3 per cent in 2011. Yet there’s evidence that in areas where privatisation is at the highest levels the outcomes are dire – in the form of more people dying from treatable causes.
In mental health care – in the face of terribly tragedies, and much higher levels of privatisation, with public provision gutted – there’s been more attention. Now 55 per cent of under-18 inpatient mental health care is delivered by for-profit providers.
Meanwhile, we are all continuing to pay for the disaster of Labour Party-promoted Private Finance Initiative (PFI) schemes. That sees some hospitals paying a sixth of their total budget on payments, frequently to offshore hedge funds, and from a £13 billion original investment a final bill that will reach £80 billion, the equivalent of £1,200 for each person in the UK.
The Green Party holds that the profit motive should have no place in our health care – in any form of care – but the current largest opposition party, Labour, appears to be a fan of even further steps of privatisation.
There’s also long term underfunding, with austerity in the face of a growing and ageing population having disastrous impacts. Provision for investment on infrastructure and technology collapsed; the RAAC crisis was just one visible tip of a very large iceberg of decline.
And that austerity saw a collapse in real terms of the pay of nurses and doctors, which has seen a huge exodus overseas and to other jobs, meaning huge understaffing, which puts massive pressure on remaining staff.
Make no mistake. The state of the system is not the fault of medical staff. It is not the fault of managers. It is a long-term political failure, the application of ideology over evidence, the interests of private companies over public good.
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