THE SNP have brought forward a bill in Westminster to “keep the NHS in public hands”.
Seamus Logan, the party’s health spokesperson, has presented a bill to the Commons which would prevent the NHS from being privatised through international trade agreements.
There were fears parts of the NHS could have been privatised through the aborted Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership proposed between the EU and the USA around a decade ago.
They have been reignited by Health Secretary Wes Streeting’s pledge to “hold the door wide open” for private investment in the health service – which some see as a precursor to privatisation.
Before the election, we revealed how Streeting had taken £175,000 from donors linked with private health care firms.
Writing in The Telegraph at the start of the General Election campaign, Streeting (below) said: “We will go further than New Labour ever did. I want the NHS to form partnerships with the private sector that goes beyond just hospitals.”
And he boasted in The Guardian that he would take on the “middle-class lefties” opposed to using private companies in the health service.
Logan’s presentation bill will also require the Government to seek the consent of Parliament before agreeing to any international trade agreements “insofar as they relate to” the NHS.
He told The National: “Our NHS must remain in public hands, not the private sectors and while the Labour Government may want to ‘hold the door wide open’ to private healthcare from abroad, the SNP will fight to keep it firmly shut – that's exactly what this bill will do.”
Logan (below) pointed to Labour’s acceptance of a £4 million donation from the hedge fund Quadrature, which holds investments in private health firms.
He added: “We will stand by the founding principles of the NHS, keeping it free at the point of delivery and keeping our health service where it belongs, in public hands – that is what putting Scotland’s interests first looks like and I urge Scottish Labour MPs to join us and back this bill.”
Presentation bills “rarely become law”, according to parliamentary experts at the Hansard Society because they have “no speech or debate attached to them”.
There are exceptions from the Brexit era when the opposition was able to wrest control of parliamentary business away from Theresa May’s minority government.
Jackie Baillie, Scottish Labour's health spokesperson, said: "Labour created the NHS and will always protect it so it is free at the point of need to all those who depend on it.
"After 17 years in power, this SNP Government recently presided over the worst August for A&E waits on record.
"Rather than trying to tell the UK Labour Government how to fix NHS England, the SNP should get on with the job of cleaning up the mess it created."
