HEALTH campaigners have criticised the Royal Free London NHS trust after its flagship hospital began offering private GP services.

The Royal Free has provided private hospital services for many years, but this is the first time GPs have been able to run a private practice there.

London Health Emergency’s John Lister told the Star that the news was “massively ironic,” noting: “The hospital was set up in 1828 to give treatment to those who could not afford it.

“It was formed on that basis of care, which is why it is called Royal Free. This is why it is an outrage that it is the first to see a private GP service.”

Mr Lister added that, in the year of the NHS’s 70th anniversary, the people running the trust had no respect for its traditions.  

The surgery, which opened in October, is run by private medical company EdgCARE, whose website gives the price of a 30-minute consultation as £80.

Keep Our NHS Public co-chair Dr Tony O’Sullivan told the Star: “It is highly regrettable that the trust is opportunistically opening up private GP services at a time when NHS primary care is taking a battering from government policies of underfunding and failure to train enough doctors and nurses.

“The chief executive would be better learning from the headteachers who marched on Downing Street to highlight underfunding of schools.

“NHS managers should be vocally criticising government failures not trying to cash in on them. CEOs and NHS providers should act in concert to demand an immediate change of policy and an end to wasteful privatisation with its two-tier inequality.”