Contractor fights for share of public funds

NO UK GOVERNMENT has sold off the NHS as a single entity – but recent ones have been letting the private sector take over various parts of the service.

There’s a number of big problems with this piecemeal privatisation.
•Private companies take a profit out of the public services they run.
•Private companies can go bust – leaving the public stuck without vital services (remember Carillion?).
•Private companies often pay their staff less than they received in the public sector – so privatisation of a public service can drag down the local economy.

Now the row over whether private companies should be allowed to run public services has come to a head in Nottingham. Nottingham’s Clinical Commissioning Group (the body which decides whether private companies can run a particular service) has decided to award a contract “in-house” – in other words, let the Nottingham University Hospitals Trust run some of its own services. Circle, a private company which specialises in taking public money to run profitable health services, says that the Trust isn’t up to the job.

The row is due to be settled tomorrow, 15th May, at the High Court. Whatever the Court decides is bound to be used as a precedent for deciding whether the NHS can run its own services or whether the taxpayer has to keep shelling out money to private companies to pay dividends to shareholders.

Nottingham Keep Our NHS Public will be holding a protest outside the Court while the case is heard. Tower Hamlets health campaigners will be there to support them. They are asking people to join them to help save the public NHS from the greed of private business.

Protest: Wednesday, 15th May, 12.30-1.30pm
7 Rolls Buildings, Fetter Lane, Holborn, London EC4A 1NL
(round the corner from the Strand Entrance
to the Royal Courts of Justice

•Read more about it:
Carillion: more jobs to go
Campaigners explain opposition to GP at Hand