Ilford North voters: Stop Wes Streeting using public money to build up private healthcare

BREAKING: Private healthcare companies are asking the government to guarantee them public money for the long term, in exchange for spending £1 billion building up their own facilities.

What does private healthcare get out of this deal? They get public money for the long term. They keep all the facilities they build. They make billions in profit.

What does the public get? NOTHING. This is a bad deal for the public.

Take 1 minute to send our letter to Health Secretary Wes Streeting now - demand that he invest in our NHS, not private profits.

Member of Parliament for Ilford North

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I am writing to you because I am alarmed by the news that you are considering plans that would guarantee private health companies public money and contracts for the long term, in exchange for promises that they'll invest £1 billion into building up their own facilities.
What does private healthcare get out of this deal? They get public money for the long term. They keep all the facilities they build. They make billions in profit. 
What does the public get? NOTHING. This is a bad deal for the public. 
This bears all the hallmarks of private finance initiatives which saw NHS Trusts saddled with over £80 billion in PFI debts. PFI has done significant damage to NHS Trust budgets, and, as a consequence, to their ability to provide the care that NHS patients deserve and that Trusts want to provide.
As a resident of Ilford North and your constituent, I am convinced that thousands of local voters who voted for you would not have backed this if you ran on it.
Even without the element of locking the NHS into long term contracts, using the private sector is ultimately bad for our NHS. Not recognising this is favouring privatisation ideologically.
We Own It research found that private companies take £10 million out of our NHS in profit EVERY SINGLE WEEK. This money should be used to treat thousands of people on NHS waiting lists.
I have seen suggestions that building in more private sector capacity allows you to create a separate assembly line process to tackle the backlog in elective procedures so that the NHS can focus on complex patients.
But we already know it won’t work. The private sector largely relies on the same doctors who are also supposed to focus on complex patients within the NHS. Past promises by them to recruit from staff who have left the workforce or abroad haven't been borne out in reality. The Conservatives have been handing out billions to private hospitals to “help” cut NHS waiting lists since 2020. The waiting list numbers have kept going up for the past 4 years.
Moreover, the NHS uses those simple “assembly line” procedures to train doctors; training opportunities that would be lost if those procedures were taken out of the NHS. The private sector largely does not train doctors.
Our local King George Hospital in Ilford is showing the way forward. They have recently built two new operating theatres dedicated to an assembly line for patients waiting for elective procedures. Invest and build those assembly lines inside the NHS. 
The decisions you make today will affect patients for years to come. Invest in the NHS, not in private healthcare.  
Thank you very much for your time.

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