PRIVATE firms have pocketed an estimated £6.7 billion in profits on contracts paid for out of NHS budgets over the past dozen years — that’s over £10 million a week —  campaign group We Own It says.

And 78 per cent — £5.2bn — of those total profits are for contracts for services that could be provided in-house by the NHS.

Its analysis is based on 72,258 private contracts between January 2012 and May 2024.