‘This is the danger of using the private sector to deliver our health services,’ a Unison spokeswoman told News Line.
‘We’ve always warned that the private companies are just in it for the money.
‘They negotiated lucrative contracts that meant they got paid whether they carried out operations or not.
‘That money should go for NHS patient care. It will only get worse if the Health and Social Care Bill is enacted,’ she warned.
Unison was responding to a report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) which revealed that the Blair/Brown Labour government’s Independent Sector Treatment Centres (ISTCs) scheme has cost the taxpayer nearly £500m in botched contracts.
Professor Allyson Pollock, Director of the Centre for International Public Health Policy (CIPHP) at the University of Edinburgh, warned against the coalition’s ‘reforms’.
If the Health and Social Care Bill goes through, she said: ‘The poor value for money of ISTCs will be multiplied thousands of times over.
‘In a time of economic austerity this will be a catastrophe for the NHS if more private providers are brought in.’
Also warning against the Tory Bill, the chair of the BMA’s private practice committee, Derek Machim, a consultant who was a member of the Labour government’s Commercial Directorate set up to scrutinise ISTCs, said: ‘We could not get any financial information because of the words “commercial-in-confidence”.
‘The private sector are very clever at extracting money from governments, but commercial sensitivity can hide this for years.’
The BIJ said that the Labour government’s initiative, introduced to help reduce waiting times, encouraged NHS trusts to sign up private providers to perform routine procedures, like knee and hip operations.
But while waiting times did decrease, the Bureau said that ‘the government squandered £462.4m of taxpayers’ money through a series of “needless” payments written into contracts that were risk-free to the private health providers.’
The BIJ said yesterday: ‘There were two “waves” of ISTCs. The first centre opened in 2003, while the second wave began in 2007.
‘Under wave one, 31 contracts were awarded. Of these, 12 are still operating under the original agreement.
‘The bulk of the waste stems from an arrangement called “take or pay”, where the NHS allotted the private provider a set sum at the beginning of each year, in order to complete a fixed number of operations.
‘But the Bureau has found that of the 31 first wave treatment centres, just four were performing all contracted operations.
‘In contrast, nine performed less than 75 per cent. In total, the government paid £217m for operations that never happened.
‘The worst performer was the Greater Manchester Surgical Centre, run by South African group Netcare.
‘There, only 56 per cent of contracted procedures were carried out. Netcare received nearly £38m for operations never performed.’
The BIJ added: ‘The Bureau’s investigation shows that the taxpayer has been lumbered with a bill including over £200m paying for operations that did not happen; more than £186m for “buying back” treatment centres at the end of contracts, and a compensation bill totalling almost £60m paid to companies when planned ISTCs were axed.’
