CAMPAIGNERS have slammed shadow health secretary Wes Streeting’s plan to send NHS doctors and nurses to private hospitals for treatment.

Mr Streeting announced last weekend that Labour has struck a deal with private provider Nuffield Health to treat 4,000 NHS doctors and nurses who have back, knee and hip problems each year.

Doctors’ Association UK co-chairwoman Helen Fernandes said: “The NHS should be there for everyone, but it has been chronically underfunded and understaffed over the past decade which has left it struggling to keep pace with demand.

“Redirecting public money into the private sector undermines the NHS and does little more than apply a sticking plaster to a gaping wound.”

Mr Streeting announced in April that if Labour wins the general election, it will perform “major surgery” on the NHS and increase reliance on the private sector in an attempt to cut waiting lists. 

But campaigners warn that this policy is not only inefficient, but puts patients at risk and undermines the NHS as private hospitals depend on NHS doctors for their operations.

Johnbosco Nwogbo, lead campaigner at We Own It, said Mr Streeting’s “number one job should be to empower and build up the NHS so it can treat everyone, including our wonderful NHS staff who treat everyone else. His job is not to enrich private healthcare.

“The private sector has no A&E, they leech resources from the NHS including staff, and they cherry-pick patients, only taking the easiest and only most profitable patients. 

“If you’re putting money into private hospitals, you’re not putting that money into the NHS and the public knows it.”

A recent study by Oxford University has shown that outsourcing health services does not deliver cheaper or better quality care.