- Conference
- 2015 Health Care Service Group Conference
- Date
- 27 November 2014
- Decision
- Carried
The NHS Health and Social Care Act opened the door to wholesale and unfettered privatisation of the NHS. Conference is appalled at the scale of this sell-off.
The NHS in England has also seen a proliferation of a new model of privatisation that is sometimes referred to as a Primary Provider contract.
One particular example of this is the proposed £1.2 billion contract for Cancer and End of Life Care services across Staffordshire. This contract enables a private contractor to organise, provide and sub-contract all aspects of this core NHS work. Conference recognises and applauds the work of the community campaigns such as the ‘cancer not for profit’ campaign in Staffordshire that has had great success in raising awareness and political lobbying on this issue.
The Primary Provider model can be seen as effectively the privatisation of both the commissioning and provision of healthcare. Primary Provider privatisation will also result in two tiers of profit between NHS funding and the patient with both the Primary Provider and any sub contracted private sector provider demanding profits.
A Primary Provider contract also raises grave concerns for accountability with Clinical Commissioning Groups giving complete control away and only monitoring outcomes. It also further removes trades unions from any meaningful engagement, particularly with some private companies’ history of anti Trades Unionism. Conference is also gravely concerned with the threats to NHS staff pay and conditions from this two tier privatisation. These large scale privatisations do pose significant organising challenges to the union with single contracts spanning across multiple services and therefore potentially affecting members in a number of UNISON branches.
Conference calls on the Health Service Group Executive to:
1) keep the fight against privatisation as the highest of priorities;
2) lobby and campaign alongside UNISON Labour Link to commit a future Labour government to not only repeal the NHS Health and Social Care Act but to end privatisation of NHS services;
3) encourage and co-ordinate branches and regions to engage and work with appropriate local community campaigning groups;
4) monitor the use of Primary Provider contracts by Clinical Commissioning Groups;
5) provide bargaining support to branches and regions on this model of privatisation.