EDM: New private capital in the NHS in the Autumn Budget

New private capital in the NHS in the Autumn Budget

Tabled by Cat Eccles (Labour) 48 signatures

The motion

That this House welcomes the Government’s ambition to bring care closer to communities, but notes with grave concern proposals to reintroduce the use of private capital for building NHS Neighbourhood Health Centres (NHC); believes that similar past arrangements, such as PFI and PF2, are still damaging the NHS, with one trust paying back up to 27 times the initial capital invested and some trusts making annual repayments that exceed spending on medicines for patients; notes that reintroducing private capital in the NHS would break the Government manifesto promise that the NHS will always be publicly owned and funded, further undermining trust in politics; further believes that new private capital would set the health service and the patients who rely on it on a course for almost certain future harm, causing scarce resources to be put toward debt repayment instead of patient care; further notes that alternative models of private finance, such as the Mutual Investment Model used in Wales, where the Heads of the Valleys Road project and the Velindre Cancer centre will have to be paid for almost two and three times over by the taxpayer, are also incredibly poor value for the public purse; is convinced that there are other ways to raise finances for NHCs beside raising taxes or borrowing, such as wholesale renegotiation of current PFI debts to reduce future payouts and redeploying savings; and calls on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to commit to ringfencing and protecting the NHS from any new private finance.

Signatories (48)