Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer speaks to medical staff and media during a visit to Elective Orthopaedic Centre in Epsom, Surrey, to highlight his ‘plan for change’ commitments on health, January 6, 2025
KEIR STARMER says he is expanding NHS dependence on the private sector because he is “not interested in putting ideology before patients.”
But continuing to increase outsourcing of NHS care to private providers ignores the evidence of the last decade and puts corporate profit, not patients, first.
Labour’s plans for the NHS represent continuity with Tory policy, not change.
The number of procedures outsourced by the NHS has steadily grown since 2014, without any discernible impact on waiting lists, which have soared in the same period.
Private hospitals have claimed an ever greater share of routine operations, now performing about a quarter of hip and knee replacements and the same proportion of cataract removals: extracting sizeable profits on simple operations which would cost less in-house.
In the process, they undermine the NHS’s capacity to deliver such treatments. Most medics working in the private sector also carry out work for the NHS, while private providers are constantly seeking to recruit more NHS staff: the greater the demand for private operations, the greater the drain on the NHS workforce. Outsourcing is not driven simply by need but by greed: with higher rates available in the private sector, some doctors have an incentive to refer patients for private treatment at public expense.
Starmer wants to raise the number of privately provided operations by another 20 per cent. But with a shared workforce, this could mean the NHS paying more for the same number of procedures rather than slashing waiting lists.
Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner and Rachel Reeves wear the uniform of the rich and powerful. They have all had clothes bought for them by multi-millionaire Labour donor Lord Alli. CORRECTION: It appears that Rachel Reeves clothing was provided by Juliet Rosenfeld.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer (centre) and Health Secretary Wes Streeting (left), with NHS CEO Amanda Pritchard (right) during a visit to Elective Orthopaedic Centre in Epsom, Surrey, to highlight his ‘plan for change’ commitments on health, January 6, 2025
TARGETING a 20 per cent increase in the use of the private sector to cut waiting lists risks “permanently embedding the profit-taking parasite” into the health service, campaigners have warned.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer claimed he is “not interested in putting ideology before patients” as he unveiled the NHS’s growing use of private healthcare in a major speech today.
Private operators will receive an extra £2.5 billion a year in government funding under his new elective reform plan to address a waiting list for planned care on which 6.4 million people are waiting for 7.5m treatments.
This amounts to as many as a million extra appointments, scans and operations a year by the for-profit sector, with the official aim of patients no longer having to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital care by spring 2029.
During his speech in Surrey, the prime minister acknowledged some people will “not like” expansion of the private sector in the NHS, but said: “To cut waiting times as dramatically as possible, our approach must be totally unburdened by dogma.”
Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr Tony O’Sullivan said: “The commitment of Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting to long-term contracts with the private sector threatens to permanently embed the profit-taking parasite in the NHS host, undermining the prospect of NHS recovery as a publicly provided universal service meeting the needs of the population.
“Starmer says he will ‘not let ideology stand in the way’ but it is their ideological choice that will stand in the way of sustainable NHS recovery.
“Safe and prompt community care will only be delivered through an urgent expansion of skilled staff.”
We Own It lead campaigner Johnbosco Nwogbo said: “Using the private sector to cut waiting lists was the centrepiece of the Conservative government’s Elective Recovery Plan in February 2022, but waiting lists kept going up.
“Starmer’s ‘new’ initiative looks suspiciously similar to the Conservatives’ failed plan.
“Hospitals are crumbling while the NHS is haemorrhaging at least £10m a week to private shareholder profits — money which could build a new operating theatre every week.
Protesters march in Huddersfield Photo: Neil Terry Photography
THE first Palestine protests of 2025 took place across Britain at the weekend.
In Wales, campaigners staged a day of healthcare protests including outside Maelor Hospital in Wrexham.
The protest was against “the total destruction of key hospitals and healthcare facilities in Gaza and the wholesale slaughter of Palestinian doctors, nurses and paramedics by the Israeli military.”
A freedom march was also staged through the town of Huddersfield in West Yorkshire on Saturday, organised by Huddersfield Freedom For Palestine.
And hundreds marched through the streets of Manchester on Saturday in a weekly protest organised by Greater Manchester Friends of Palestine (GMFP), which brings together a dozen support groups in the region.
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Palestine Solidarity Campaign said: “Israel is escalating its attack on Palestinian healthcare system — attacking hospitals and imprisoning hundreds of healthcare workers.
“Join us to demand our government takes action to save Gaza’s healthcare workers.”
The next national demonstration for Palestine takes place in London on January 20.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Foreign Minister David Lammy confirms that UK government and military are active participants in Israel’s genocides and that the F-35 parts that they suspended from supplying to Israel are instead simply diverted via the United States. He says see https://youtu.be/QILgUHrdWRE
A Palestinian child plays amid the rubble of destroyed buildings at the Bureij refugee camp in Gaza, Palestine on January 2, 2025. (Photo: Eyad Baba/AFP via Getty Images)
The Knesset members are urging the Israeli military to destroy all sources of water, food, and energy—and to kill “anyone not flying a white flag of surrender.”
At least seven far-right members of the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, are calling on the country’s defense minister to order the total destruction of northern Gaza’s food, water, and energy sources—most of which have already been obliterated by 15 months of relentless attacks—and the killing of any Palestinian who isn’t clearly surrendering to the attackers.
In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz dated December 31, the lawmakers assert that the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) campaign to forcibly expel Palestinians from northern Gaza—which critics have called ethnic cleansing—”isn’t being done properly” and is not “achieving the war objectives as defined by the government, which is the dismantling of Hamas’ governing and military capabilities.”
According to a translation by international humanitarian law expert Itay Epshtain on Thursday, the letter calls on the IDF to:
Destroy all energy sources including fuel, solar systems, generators, and power lines;
Destroy all food sources including warehouses, water, and water pumps; and
Lay siege and remotely kill everyone not flying a white flag of surrender.
That last demand apparently includes men, women, and children. IDF troops would then “enter gradually for a complete cleansing of the enemy’s nests,” according to the letter.
Lawmakers who signed the letter and their party affiliations include: Avraham Bezalel (Shas), Amit Halevi (Likud), Limor Son Har-Melech (Jewish Power), Osher Shkalim (Likud), Zvi Sukkot and Ohad Tal (Religious Zionism), and Nissim Vaturi (Likud).
Vaturi, the deputy Knesset speaker, previously called for Gaza to be “wiped off the face of the Earth” and argued for Israel to “stop being humane” and “burn Gaza now,” because “there are no innocents there.”
Notably, the lawmakers’ letter does not mention anything about freeing the more than 60 hostages believed to be alive and imprisoned by Hamas and possibly other groups in Gaza.
As Israeli journalist Bar Peleg reported Friday from the Jabalia refugee camp:
When the soldiers and officers in Jabalia are asked about their mission, the answer is destroying Hamas and its infrastructure, until the last terrorist is laid to rest. When they are asked, “And what about the hostages?” One soldier answered, “That concerns us, like it does everyone, but it isn’t a part of our operational considerations.”
Northern Gaza is already in ruins. As Peleg noted, “not a single habitable building remains” in Jabalia. Nearly all homes, hospitals, schools, and other infrastructure have been destroyed or damaged.
“Look at the extent of the destruction and annihilation here,” one IDF officer said. “No one has done this before.”
An IDF officer recently told Haaretz that one commander, Brig. Gen. Yehuda Vach, seeks to personally execute the so-called Generals’ Plan—a blueprint for the starvation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from northern Gaza—by besieging and expelling 250,000 Palestinians from the area. United Nations officials estimate that more than 100,000 Palestinians have been forced from northern Gaza, even as the IDF says it disavows the Generals’ Plan.
Israeli policies and actions, as well as written and spoken calls for the destruction of Gaza and its people, have been presented as evidence in the South African-led genocide case against Israel currently before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, his former defense minister who ordered the siege of Gaza, are fugitives from the International Criminal Court, which in November issued arrest warrants for the pair and Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim Al-Masri.
Israel’s 455-day bombardment, invasion, and siege of Gaza has left at least 165,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing, according to officials there.
The bodies of the Palestinian adults and children killed in an Israeli attack on the al-Mawasi “safe zone” are brought to al-Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Gaza, Palestine for funeral procedures on January 2, 2025. (Photo: Hani Alshaer/Anadolu via Getty Images)
The analysis was published a day before Israeli forces bombed yet another “safe zone,” killing at least 12 Palestinians, including children.
A report published on Wednesday details how Israel forcibly expels Palestinians in the Gaza Strip in order to facilitate—and hide—genocidal attacks in evacuated areas, while forcing refugees into alleged humanitarian “safe zones” that are “intentionally designed to ensure the destruction of all life sheltering there.”
The Palestinian human rights group Al-Haq published the report, titled How to Hide a Genocide, which examines “the role of evacuation orders and safe zones in Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.”
Since the very first week of its genocide, Israel has methodically cleared vast stretches of the Gaza Strip of its inhabitants through its unlawful issuance of evacuation orders. Israel presents these evacuation orders to the public as proof of its efforts to minimize civilian casualties and to support its alleged compliance with fundamental principles of international humanitarian law. However, they achieve the direct opposite. Over 90% of Gaza’s population… has been forcibly displaced from their homes and temporary shelters, the majority of them multiple times, to alleged safe zones.
Contrary to their label, these zones are anything but safe. With insufficient space, shelter, sanitation facilities, food, or water sources, and medical care, these safe zones are intentionally designed to ensure the destruction of all life sheltering there. What’s more, the safe zones—despite their unilateral establishment by Israel—are routinely targeted by Israeli occupying forces (IOF) by air, land, and sea. Crowded together with nowhere to flee, Palestinians in Gaza are either killed by Israeli strikes, severely physically and mentally injured by the IOF’s physical and psychological warfare, or subject to a slow death as a result of starvation, dehydration, a complete lack of crucial medical care, or the rampant spread of infectious diseases in the densely populated, unsanitary zones.
Al-Haq said: “As shown throughout the report, by applying humanitarian terms to its practice of forcibly transferring Palestinians, without any legal basis and in a manner that breaches international law, and labeling areas as safe zones despite being constantly attacked and lacking in all essentials for survival, Israel argues that it is acting in accordance with its legal obligations when in fact it is providing further evidence of its genocidal intent as it uses these measures to commit and contribute to the genocidal acts of killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza.”
The Al-Haq report was published shortly after Sila Mahmoud Al-Faseeh, a 3-week-old baby girl, died from hypothermia in the al-Mawasi safe zone in southern Gaza. She is one of at least eight people—seven of them infants or children—who have reportedly frozen to death in Gaza in recent weeks.
The report was also published a day before Israeli forces bombed a tent encampment in al-Mawasi, killing at least 12 Palestinians including three children and wounding at least 15 others.
It was one of numerous Israeli strikes on the al-Mawasi safe zone, which have killed or wounded at least hundreds of Palestinians. In the deadliest of these, at least 90 Palestinians including many women and children were killed—some of them burned alive in their tents—and hundreds of others were injured when eight 2,000-pound bombs, at least one of which was supplied by the United States, were dropped on the humanitarian zone on July 13, 2024 in order to assassinate Hamas leader Mohammed Deif. Israeli forces then attacked and killed rescue workers arriving at the site of the strike.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called the death toll from the strike “unacceptably high.” However, just weeks later, the Biden administration approved approximately $20 billion worth of new U.S. weapons for Israel.
The International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands is currently weighing whether Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
