WES STREETING makes it clear that Labour poses a threat to the NHS, and in government will pursue a privatising agenda.

Streeting has done so before, but his article in Rupert Murdoch’s Sun, which gloats that the shadow health secretary is “pitching himself against healthcare unions and Labour supporters,” is a gauntlet thrown down to the labour movement.

It shows that the crisis of healthcare in Britain will not be addressed by electing a new government, and needs to be the focus of serious political campaigning by health workers and their unions, in alliance with patient and community organisations.

Streeting’s jibe at “middle-class lefties” who oppose outsourcing operations to the private sector sits in a long tradition of Labour rightwingers, who cite a working-class background as a reason to reject “ideology” in favour of results.

So let’s note first that Labour’s NHS policy is identical to that of the ruling Conservatives.

With waiting lists above seven million, everyone accepts the NHS is in crisis, so an opposition promising to do exactly what the government is currently doing cannot inspire hope. 

In December, the Financial Times analysed data showing the NHS was “outsourcing more eye, hip and knee operations than ever before” and that a “steady shift” towards paying the private sector to carry out procedures had been evident since 2014. This has demonstrably not solved the waiting list problem, which has dramatically worsened.

That’s because private healthcare in Britain is not complementary to the NHS but parasitical on it. 

Private hospitals often lack intensive care facilities or the capacity for multidisciplinary back-up in the event of complications, meaning the NHS gets left with the more difficult and expensive cases. The private sector’s cherry-picking undermines NHS finances.

It recruits from the same pool, which worsens NHS staffing shortages, a major cause of the operations backlog (the NHS had over 130,000 vacancies by the end of 2022). 

Not only that but it actually recruits the same people. Many private healthcare staff are still working for the NHS, but their second jobs reduce the time they spend working for it. This can create conflicts of interest (doctors have been known to refer patients for private-sector procedures which pay better). 

As lengthening NHS waiting lists fuel rising demand for private healthcare, private providers are actively poaching NHS staff, offering golden handshakes and bonuses to medics who recruit former colleagues. 

The whole is a vicious cycle, since staff shortages are one reason NHS workers are overstretched and burnt out. Staff turnover is extremely high (nearly 170,000 workers left the service in 2022), and a Labour government is not going to solve that problem without money — the average nurse has lost 8 per cent of their income in real terms since 2010, and the figure rises to over 20 per cent for experienced nurses. To take another resource, the number of NHS beds has halved since 1990: reversing the trend is going to need real investment.

Streeting strikes a populist note, but opposition to outsourced healthcare is not the preserve of “middle-class lefties.” It is the overwhelming consensus among British people. 

Last year a survey for We Own It found 66 per cent want outsourcing ended and just 25 per cent back the Tory-Labour position of allowing private providers to perform NHS operations. Two years before, an OpenDemocracy study found 76 per cent believed greater use of the private sector would undermine the quality of NHS care.

The shadow health secretary’s “straight-talking man of the people” act is dishonest. The cross-party consensus on privatisation will further erode NHS services and paves the way for an insurance-based model of healthcare. 

Unions should warn Labour to ditch Streeting — whose Ilford North seat is in fact vulnerable to independent British-Palestinian challenger Leanne Mohamad — and reject his plans, or face the financial and electoral consequences.