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.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting meeting staff during a visit to London Ambulance Service headquarters in south London, December 9, 2024
Campaigners warn Labour’s ‘pro-business approach to data’ has ‘potential for further loss of public trust’ in the NHS
HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting’s plans to sell GP data to the private sector “make no sense,” warned experts raising fresh privacy concerns yesterday.
Campaigners also warned Labour’s “pro-business approach to data” had the potential for further loss of public trust in the health service.
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Mr Streeting in October said that data “is the future of the NHS” and Britain “could lead the world in medical research.”
He plans to create a “single access system” for information from GP surgeries, hospitals and other care settings after NHS England awarded a controversial £330 million contract to US spy tech giant Palantir in 2023 to develop a new platform.
Today Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr John Puntis said: “The Data Use and Access Bill currently going through Parliament illustrates Labour’s pro-business approach to data as a valuable resource, and highlights the potential for further loss of public trust.
“It aims to make data, including our personal heath data, widely available to public authorities and the private sector.
“The Secretary of State will be given power to erode safeguards over use of personal data for research.
“Labour intends to reduce the regulatory burden on businesses at the expense of safeguards for citizens.
“An alternative vision would include investment in a publicly owned national digital infrastructure aimed at storing and managing NHS data currently being processed through cloud computing services that are owned by large technology companies.
“There must be safeguards against the private sector gaining access to data for profit, and the public should be fully informed about the use of people’s health data and the right to protection and privacy.”
A spokesman for Momentum said: “Selling off patients’ data is no way to fix the NHS.
“We must fully renationalise our healthcare system and defend it from corporate interests, not welcome them.”
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.
A woman named Mary holds a sign in support of Luigi Mangione outside the Criminal Court building in lower Manhattan as Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the United Healthcare CEO killing, waived extradition to New York on December 19, 2024. (Photo: Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)
To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized.
Early this month Luigi Mangione, 26, University of Pennsylvania graduate, allegedly gunned down CEO of UnitedHealthcare, Brian Thompson, 50. The public response has been varied, with many supporting Mangione. Some fear the positive regard of Mangione is indicative of a shift into a new era where violence is glorified and humanity is lost. As a sociology professor who teaches Poverty, Wealth, and Privilege, I disagree. This failure of subsets of the public to broadly denounce the actions of Mangione does not herald a cultural shift in appreciation of violence.
Instead this unusual display of class consciousness reflects two things. First, the reaction is due to the shift in who bore the cost of violence. Class under-resourced; Black, Indigenous, Latinx and people of color; women; and queer and trans people are the normal recipients of societal violence. Wealthy, cishet, white men in positions of power are not. Wealthy, white communities are conditioned to expect protection, and the revocation of that sheltering is rare.
Second, the working classes are weary from surviving an unnecessarily violent and unjust society. We live amid staggering class, race, and gender-based stratification and life and death stakes everyday. The ruling class profits from our blood, sweat, and tears. And yet, when one of the elite passes, they want us to give them more. They ask us to give them our love. Yet, they remain calloused to our pain and ignore our pleas for fairness.
We, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth?
Recently, a magician performed at a kid’s birthday party. Magic tricks work through deception. A magician distracts the audience to hide what else they are doing. Similar dynamics play out in our public life. The wealth gap continues to grow, yet we voted in a billionaire to be president. The public is shamed for failing to appropriately sympathize with Brian Thompson and his family, yet everyday targeted attacks and systemic neglect accumulate to harm and render disposable historically and strategically marginalized communities, such as class under-resourced, BIPOC, women, and trans and queer people.
Let us stop this charade. Our healthcare system is not pro-health. The World Health Organization (WHO) names universal healthcare as a worldwide goal. The United States has not complied. Most Americans are insured through private companies. Many Americans struggle to pay for healthcare, they postpone receiving care, and are in medical debt. The healthcare system has practices, such as using AI to deny a high number of healthcare claims, which put profits over people. There is something deeply inhumane and harmful about this disregard for health in a healthcare system. It may not be illegal, but it is savage.
The elite and their apologists ask, “How could they not be appalled by Thompson’s murder?” Instead we, as a community, might ask, how are the elite and their apologists not appalled by a harm-rich system that normalizes the idea that humans are only as valuable as their economic worth? Decades ago, Larry Summers, currently on the board of directors of OpenAI, famously wrote that people who produce less are more expendable. This classist ideology pervades our healthcare system.
To honor Brian Thompson, and to ensure his death is not in vain, we can engage in the needed conversation about the extreme depravity of our healthcare system which his death revitalized. A path forward that reforms a calloused healthcare system can provide benefits to all of us. Those among us who deeply mourn Brian’s death can take solace that it can impart a legacy of positive, sustainable, and overdue social change. Those among us who view Mangione’s action as predictable, if not understandable, can appreciate the same reform.
To be sure, there are people who claim that human fallibility is a predestined curse that we cannot overcome, that we are born sinners and that we cannot do better than prioritize greed over care of each other, even within our healthcare system. There will be those of us who feel that disproportionate wealth is a triumph and that our healthcare should reflect the position we hold in our socioeconomic system. However, 73 countries have universal healthcare, including China, Russia, Mexico and Canada. Us Americans are also worthy.
Wealthy and powerful people are the most protected against societal harms, and they also have disproportionate control over them. We need the CEOs, billionaires, and other power elites to do better. The system does not have a great way to hold those in charge accountable for bad behavior. Can they figure out a way to hold themselves accountable? Can they reorganize to prioritize care, a virtue, over greed, a vice, in our healthcare system? If they are immune to this self-correcting recovery, we need to organize around collective action, such as voting, for example for single-payer healthcare, because our lives depend on it. We don’t want anyone dying in the street. We also don’t want anyone dying or in pain due to a broken so-called healthcare system.
Thames Water, the UK’s largest such firm, is fighting for its survival after years of poor performance, fines and hefty dividend payouts Photograph: Gill Allen/REX/Shutterstock
Guardian Exclusive: UK’s biggest water company assessed risks before cutting back on cost of environmental work, investigation shows
Thames Water intentionally diverted millions of pounds pledged for environmental clean-ups towards other costs including bonuses and dividends, the Guardian can reveal.
The company, which serves more than 16 million customers, cut the funds after senior managers assessed the potential risks of such a move.
Discussions – held in secret – considered the risk of a public and regulatory backlash if it emerged that cash set aside for work such as cutting river pollution had been spent elsewhere.
This could be seen as abreach of the company’s licence commitments and leave it vulnerable to accusations it had broken the law, according to sources and material seen by the Guardian.
Thames Water continued to pay staff bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, and also paid tens of millions in dividends as recently as March this year, while cutting back on its spending promises. The company did so despite public claims from its leaders that improvements to its environmental performance, including on pollution, were a priority.
Wildlife presenter Liz Bonnin and naturalist and TV presenter Chris Packham join thousands of environmental campaigners from more than 130 organisations in a March for Clean Water on 3 November 2024 in London. Photograph: Mark Kerrison/In Pictures/Getty Images
