Mr Wright – who fought to ensure services such as Maternity and Paediatrics moved from Shrewsbury to Telford – says David Cameron’s NHS re-organisation which came into force on Monday, after a long and bruising battle with NHS staff and patients, is the “biggest threat to the NHS since Thatcher times.”
From Monday, GP commissioners are being forced to open up all contracts to ‘Any Qualified Provider’ and already 396 community services across England have been privatised.
Labour’s NHS Check report reveals that the NHS has spent £3.45 billion on the re-organisation so far. Over £1 billion has been spent on redundancy payments and new figures from Labour reveal a third of laid-off managers, 2200, have been re-employed in the new structure.
In addition, hundreds of the new NHS bodies have missed the 1 April 2013 deadline for authorisation. David Nicholson, the Chief Executive of NHS England, has conceded that the NHS is now at “maximum risk”.
David Wright MP said:
“In a week where the most vulnerable in our society are hit with the bedroom tax while millionaires get a tax cut, the Tory-led Government is putting at risk one of the very cornerstones of our nation.
“I have always supported using the private sector in the NHS in order to clear backlogs or provide extra capacity at times of need, but what the government is doing is encouraging the sell off of capacity so that, in the future, the private sector can charge what it likes. With the support of the Liberal Democrats, this is the biggest threat to the NHS since Thatcher times.
“I am heartened that Labour has committed to repeal David Cameron’s Health and Social Care Act and the market system it foists on the NHS. Labour would maintain the NHS bodies created by the Act to prevent the upheaval of another re-organisation. But it makes a clear commitment to restore the legal framework of a universal, collaborative health service.”
Andy Burnham MP, Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, launching Labour’s NHS Check report on the dangerous flaws in the re-organisation, said:
“David Cameron has placed the National Health Service on a fast-track to fragmentation and privatisation.
“He has siphoned over £3 billion out of the front-line and blown it on a back-office re-organisation that no-one wanted and for which nobody voted.
“The British public have never given him permission to put the NHS up for sale.
“Thousands of managers have received six-figure pay-offs while thousands of nurses have been given their P45s. Nothing more clearly illustrates a Government with its priorities wrong.
“Far from letting ‘doctors decide’, Ministers are forcing the medical profession to open up all NHS services to the market. Hundreds of new private companies now risk fragmenting patient care when more integration is needed.
“With today’s changes, David Cameron has put profits before patients in the NHS. Doctors will not be in control, but required to offer up the NHS to the lowest bidder. That’s why Labour will repeal the Government’s free market and put the right values back at the heart of the NHS.”
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