UK government is now using the coronavirus pandemic to transfer key National Health Service (NHS) duties to the private sector with no proper scrutiny.
General practitioners, campaign groups, politicians, and academics have expressed concerns over the government’s move. They said Matt Hancock, UK Health Secretary, had “accelerated” the dismantling of state healthcare.
In recent weeks, authorities have used special powers to award a string of contracts to private companies without open competition.
Private companies such as Deloitte, KPMG, Sodexo, Serco, Mitie, Boots, and Palantir (the US data-mining group) have secured taxpayer-funded commissions to manage COVID-19 testing centers, the purchasing of personal protective equipment (PPE), and the building of Nightingale hospitals.
Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office since 2020, said, “The government must not allow the current crisis to be used as cover to extend the creeping privatization of the NHS.”
“The process for the management and purchase of medical supplies must be open, transparent, and subject to full scrutiny,” she added. “Deloitte’s track record of delivering PPE to the frontline since this virus began is not one of success and taking more decision-making authority from NHS managers and local authorities shifts power further from the frontline.”
Dr. Tony O’Sullivan, co-chair of the campaign group “Keep Our NHS Public,” said, “This was a ‘dangerous time’ for the NHS, and that the ‘error-ridden response’ from government had exposed a decade of underfunding.”
“Now, rather than learning from those errors they are compounding them by centralizing decision-making but outsourcing huge responsibility for the safety of the population to private companies,” Dr. O’Sullivan added.
Dr. Allyson Pollock, Director of the Newcastle University Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science, said tasks such as diagnostic testing, contact tracing, and the purchasing of PPE should be handled through regional authorities instead of the central government.
“We are beginning to see the construction of parallel structures, having eviscerated the old ones,” Dr. Pollock said. “I don’t think this is anything new, it just seems to be accelerated under Matt Hancock. These structures are completely divorced from local residents, local health services, and local communities.”
“This coronavirus pandemic is being used to privatize yet more of our NHS against the wishes of the public, and without transparency and accountability,” said Cat Hobbs, founder of We Own It, an organization that campaigns for public ownership of public services.
“This work should be done within the NHS. It shouldn’t be outsourced,” she added.
Labour Party politician Rosie Cooper said, “This is not the time for a power grab. Whatever contracts are awarded they have got to have a sunset clause.” “Three months, six months, it has got to be shown to be cost-effective for it to continue after a certain date,” added Cooper, who is a member of the health and social care committee that is conducting an inquiry into the management of the pandemic.
