Labour’s advocates of NHS privatisation

http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/02/labour-advocates-nhs-privatisation

Version 0 of 1.

Alan Milburn should not only be rebuked (Labour MPs berate party’s ‘top-down thinking’, 30 January), he should come with this health warning. He profits directly from the private healthcare industry – not only from consultancy to private healthcare through AM Strategy, but as chair of PriceWaterhouseCooper’s health industry oversight board. Commenting on his appointment, Milburn claimed that there were “strong opportunities for growth” in the private healthcare sector, which he would help PwC to exploit. He also sits on the strategic advisory board for WellDoc, has been a vice-chairman of the Lloyds Pharmacy advisory board and chairs iWantGreatCare.

His infatuation with US-style private healthcare dates from at least 2002 after a BMJ article claiming that California-based Kaiser Permanente achieved higher levels of performance at roughly the same cost as the NHS – a claim later shown to be false – prompted him to visit California. But the US healthcare model he espouses puts profits before patients, evidenced by the Commonwealth Fund finding US market-led healthcare worst and most expensive of the 11 prosperous countries. Stopping the privatisation he intervenes on behalf of would not only save money but improve the NHS. His shenanigans when in power even provoked the Treasury to issue a discussion document to explain why markets do not produce good healthcare for all (Public Services: meeting the productivity challenge, April 2003).David MurrayWallington, Surrey

• Reading your report (Miliband’s focus on NHS ‘mirrors lost cause of 1992’, 28 January) and the related editorial, I was amazed that there was no mention of either Alan Milburn or Lord Hutton’s vested interests in private healthcare provision, the former through AM Strategy and advisory roles with Bridgepoint Capital, owners of Care UK, while the latter sits on the board as a non-executive director of Circle Holdings, owners of Circle hospitals. Both Care UK and Circle are profit-making, with shareholders and board members to reward (and, as seen with Hinchingbrooke, if the pickings aren’t rich enough, they bail out). Care UK made a profit of almost £3m last year at its independent-sector treatment centre near Bristol; this was public/NHS money passing straight into private investors’ pockets, even though the ISTC did not achieve the number of operations in its contract.Graham HouseBristol

• Andy Burnham says he wants to repeal the Health and Social Care Act, and your editorial rightly points out that this implies another major NHS reorganisation. What you fail to mention is a draft bill tailor-made to address this problem, the NHS reinstatement bill 2015, drafted by David Owen and Allyson Pollock. It embodies the surgery you say is required to remove the competition clause, and also reinstates the secretary of state’s duty to provide a service. It carefully minimises the reorganisation involved in stopping the market engine in its tracks. Much thought has gone into this non-party-political draft, and if Labour in power could be persuaded to back it, it would stop the destruction of the NHS and give Labour time to plan what else it wants to do. The Greens and the National Health Action party already back the bill.

As to funding, competition is costly. Doing away with it will save a lot of money, which can be used to fund patient care. Since the internal market was introduced under John Major, administration costs as a proportion of NHS spending have gone up from 4% to over 14% and rising, as more and more clinical commissioning groups feel themselves forced to go down the competition route. Here is a well-thought-out path towards recovery, which deserves at least a mention.Jeanne WarrenGarsington, Oxfordshire