Why is the NHS on a path to privatisation?

After years of austerity and a pandemic, the NHS is in a state of crisis. Is a privatisation agenda the only solution to the problem?

Milan Perera Arts Critic Columnist, Third Year

The National Health Service, the crown jewel of Great Britain, is under more strain than ever before.

To use a colourful phrase which has been swirling the airwaves recently, ‘it is bursting at its seams’. Is the NHS fit for purpose in its current state? Is it under an increasing threat of privatisation?

In Great Britain there is one hallowed institution which is beyond reproach: the NHS. With all its warts and imperfections, it remains central to British social fabric, more so than a state religion. Governments

The NHS has endured sustained underfunding which has resulted in an underprepared and ill-equipped service are elected and defeated on the strength of their manifesto policies regarding the NHS. Yes, there are exceptions of course. After the global financial crisis of 2008, which was largely attributed to the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the United States, the incumbent Labour government suffered its lowest ebb of popularity and crashed out of the office in the 2010 General Election. This gave way to a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, in his emergency budget, resorted to blood curdling warnings and severe austerity measures which the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) described as ‘the longest, deepest sustained period of cuts to public services spending at least since the second world war’.

Over the course of their time in office, it is estimated that the average annual growth rate in healthcare spending under Labour was around

5.6 per cent – even accounting for inflation. Since 2010, annual growth in the health budget has significantly stunted. The IFS indicated: ‘UK public health spending grew in real terms by an average of 1.3 per cent per year between 2009-10 and 2015-16.’ This sustained underfunding, under the pretext of austerity, is resultant in the NHS being unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with a situation of COVID-19's magnitude.

The NHS has been gradually dismantled so that it is no longer fit for purpose. It has a litany of unaddressed shortcomings: dysfunctional GP practices, overburdened A & E which are already overstretched. According to the British Medical Association (BMA), GP practices

Does this seem like a stealth route to privatisation? It reads more like a fast track to privatisation across the country are experiencing significant and growing strain with declining GP numbers, a rising demand, struggles to recruit and retain staff and knock-on effects for patients. This last year, the NHS has lost 393 individual GP partners and 269 salaried, locum and retainer GPs.

Sowerby Eve Bentley-Hussey