DAILY MAIL COMMENT: How private sector can help revive NHS
Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s decision to make more use of private providers to cut NHS waiting lists is both welcome and, to all but the most ideologically blinkered, eminently sensible.
After all, if you have been waiting 18 months in acute pain for a hip or knee replacement, are you really going to quibble about where and by whom you are treated?
Part of the Government’s broader NHS recovery strategy, the idea is to set up 13 new community diagnostic centres – eight of them privately run – offering scans and other pre-operative tests.
This builds on existing use of the independent sector, which currently provides around 6 per cent of all NHS care.
So what is Labour’s position on this enhancement of public-private partnership? Health spokesman Wes Streeting is apparently all for it. Indeed, he attacked the Government yesterday for not bringing it about sooner.
DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s decision to make more use of private providers to cut NHS waiting lists is welcome and eminently sensible
So what is Labour’s position on this enhancement of public-private partnership? Health spokesman Wes Streeting (pictured) is apparently all for it
Which is interesting, given that less than four years ago both he and his leader, Sir Keir Starmer, stood on a manifesto which promised to ‘end and reverse’ privatisation within the NHS.
The big healthcare think-tanks are rather cooler on Mr Barclay’s plan. The Nuffield Trust says there is a risk the NHS would be left with only the most complex cases without the capacity to deal with them.
But isn’t that the whole point? Use the private hospitals to help clear the backlog of minor operations, so the NHS can concentrate on the more serious cases.
How can that be anything but a relief to hard-pressed hospital staff? (Those who are not on strike, that is.)
The sad truth is that Labour and most of the medical establishment are instinctively hostile to any private involvement in the NHS, preferring to pour ever more cash into an unreformed system that is cracking at the seams. A waiting list of 7.5million is hardly a ringing endorsement of the status quo.
The Covid vaccine miracle showed how the dynamism of the private sector can supercharge the development and delivery of new drugs. If the ideologues can swallow their prejudices, it could have the same galvanising effect on the NHS.
Two-way traffickers
We have long known that people smugglers make huge profits from bringing Albanian migrants into Britain illegally.
Now, as the Mail reveals today, they are bumping up their earnings even more by smuggling them out.
For £17,500, traffickers offer a bespoke service to Albanian criminals who need to get out of Britain in a hurry. They provide forged documents and a place in the cab of a lorry, where the wanted man poses as a second driver.
They even advertise on the social media site TikTok, using the tagline ‘Inbound and outbound by lorry’. One gang offers ‘a 100 per cent guarantee’ that they will evacuate ‘people with problems’.
British police are hunting at least 38 suspected Albanian criminals, including nine wanted for murder. It is feared many have already been spirited out of the country. With small boats coming in and lorries going out, could our borders be any more porous?
This perverse tax
As an example of flawed logic, Jeremy Hunt’s plan to end VAT-free shopping for foreign visitors is hard to beat.
The Chancellor believes the measure will raise £2billion. Meanwhile, analysis by the Centre for Economics and Business Research says the Treasury will lose £2.3billion in net receipts, as high-spending tourists desert Britain and take their business elsewhere.
It’s time for Mr Hunt to apply some joined-up thinking and abandon this perverse and ill-conceived reform.
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