HEALTH Secretary Wes Streeting has been urged to honour the New Deal for Working People after failing to back a Unison NHS strike over a £100 million-plus privatisation plan.
More than 350 facilities workers are on a three-week walkout over East Suffolk and North Essex Foundation Trust (ESNEFT’s) plans to outsource their jobs.
Large NHS contracts such as this need Cabinet Office approval but Mr Streeting has said he will not intervene in the trust’s outsourcing bid despite Labour’s promise for the biggest wave of insourcing in a generation, a union source said.
The Labour government must deliver on its commitment to bring back privatised services into the public sector. This not only saves money but also creates accountability and generates wider social benefits, argues ANDY MCDONALD MP
Despite promises of a new era of insourcing, billions of pounds of public contracts continue to flow to private firms. Unions are now calling for urgent action to bring services back in-house, says EDDIE DEMPSEY
In the second part of her critique of Wes Streeting’s TenYear Plan for Health, HELEN MERCER looks at the central planks of this privatisation blueprint


