Your editorial states that the government will be judged on the state of the NHS (The Guardian view on Labour’s NHS reforms: where is the plan to deliver them?, 22 September). It is a pity that it doesn’t also consider the risks to the future of the NHS posed by the 10-year health plan, which shifts outpatients from publicly owned hospitals to public-private-funded neighbourhood health centres and commits to contracting out NHS services, embedding privatisation.
Those who feel relaxed about the use of the private sector to deliver NHS care should note the devastating impact it is having on NHS eye care and the research by the Centre for Health and the Public Interest showing that on average £1 in every £3 that the NHS pays for a cataract operations leaks out in the form of profit. They should also heed the warnings implicit in Sam Freedman’s book Failed State: Why Nothing Works and How We Fix It: in 1979, 64% of social care beds were provided by the state, but by 2012, it was 6%. Clearly, contracting out leads to a loss of state capacity to deliver.
There are real fears that the NHS will be hollowed out and share the same fate as social care: something that everyone wants to be there should they need it, but which the state no longer has the means – or will – to deliver.
Margaret Greenwood
Former MP for Wirral West
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