NHS campaigners held the biggest ever event on NHS privatisation this evening, focusing on how it has affected public health during the coronavirus pandemic. 

In an online conference chaired by Labour MP Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Health Campaigns Together (HCT) brought together health professionals, campaigning groups and unions.

NHS Support Federation’s Paul Evans opened the conference by explaining the dangers of privatisation. 

He said: “Over the last decade, we’ve seen extensive — and at times wild — experiments with outsourcing, which have sharply exposed the fundamental issue that companies’ financial concerns will inevitably diverge from the best interests of patients and the NHS. 

“Companies have frequently terminated NHS contracts that were unprofitable. 

“The NHS will come out of the pandemic woefully understaffed on the back of a decade of underfunding. 

“More than ever, it needs investment in people, buildings and equipment to sustain it for the long term.”

Mr Evans warned that outsourcing is often associated with periods where public funding is under pressure: “when governments often bank on the cost-cutting nature of the private sector.”

We Own It campaigns officer Pascale Robinson highlighted that the billions of pounds wasted on unsuitable personal protective equipment and the test-and-trace fiasco were both the result of the NHS supply chain’s outsourcing in 2006.

She said: “We need our NHS supply chain back in house. This government wholeheartedly believes that plucky people with a few million in their pocket or a career in consultancy can save the day.

“But it’s been made clear, time and time again over the past year, that experience and a feeling of duty to the communities you serve is key to delivering a health service.”

The conference also heard from Unison vice-president James Anthony, Unite acting national Officer Jacalyn Williams and GMB organiser Lola McEvoy on how privatised staff are being treated as second-class citizens and the impact that has on the NHS.

HCT editor Dr John Lister said: “The response to Covid-19 has exposed the unreliability and ineffectiveness of private solutions to new problems.

“This helps us in our task of trying to unite the opposition to privatisation as well as dividing the enemy.”

Dr Lister said campaigners must focus on the often poorly paid workforce in the new services to “prevent mega labs poaching vital NHS staff” by offering them higher salaries.

He added: “But we can also demand that mega labs, which have been paid for with public funds, be taken over by NHS trusts, or, as a minimum, that they should be regulated, with all staff given NHS pay holidays and pensions.”