5 September 2011

This week the government will attempt to force though its plans to radically change the NHS.

Fears that they are bent on privatising the NHS appear well founded: Secret emails, uncovered by SpinWatch and published in today's Guardian reveal:

"A German company has been in talks to take over NHS hospitals, the first tangible evidence that foreign multinationals will be able to run state-owned acute services.

They also show:

"the Department of Health secretly plans to hand over the running of up to 20 NHS hospitals to foreign firms, despite the prime minister's pledge that there will be "no privatisation of the NHS".

In the papers [management consultants] McKinsey warned the department not to bundle off all the hospitals to the private sector at once – and instead start "from a mindset [of] one at a time". The consultants told officials to be mindful of the "various political constraints" associated with privatisation."

Also covered in yesterday's Observer. 

The documents released under the Freedom of Information Act can be downloaded here: Correspondence between Ian Dalton (Dept of Health) and management consultants McKinsey; Correspondence between Matthew Kershaw (Dept of Health) and management consultants McKinsey.

Private healthcare companies have been engaged in a massive lobbying effort to fundamentally change the NHS in their own interests: employing politicians (including former health ministers), hiring lobbying agencies full of government insiders, and paying think tanks close to the Conservative Party.  (A snapshot of just some of the industry's links is here).

This short film takes you on a tour of the offices of just some of these healthcare companies, agencies and think tanks surrounding Parliament.