FIGURES extracted this week by Freedom of Information requests prove conclusively that the privatisation of the ambulance service is being pushed through by the Tory coalition at breakneck speed.
A survey of the ten ambulance trusts in England reveals that seven of them have increased spending on private ambulances since 2010.
This rise has been spectacular, both in the amount of money being siphoned out of the NHS into the pockets of the privateers and the very rapid move of these private companies from just being contracted to provide ‘patient transport’ to and from appointments, to providing full-blown 999 services.
As Dr Cliff Mann, President of the College of Emergency Medicine, which represents Britain’s emergency doctors, said: ‘When trusts began using private firms for 999 calls they said it was only as a “last resort” but the scale here is nothing is like that – it’s deeply concerning.’
The amount spent by the NHS on private ambulances to provide emergency call-outs has doubled in the past three years – up from £24 million to £56 million.
In London, 4,000 emergency calls a month are attended by a private ambulance which represents an eleven fold increase in NHS spending from £829,000 to £9.2 million in the past two years.
This picture is replicated across England with the South East Coast recording spending on private ambulances up from £1.5 million to £9.5 million while the East of England region shows an increase from £4.5 million to £11.2 million.
The East of England Ambulance Service Trust (EEAST) hit the news last year when it announced that the boss of a private ambulance provider, Thames Group, had been appointed to a senior role in the trust responsible for spending NHS money on private ambulances.
It was reported that Rob Ashford gave up his job as chief executive of Thames Group and joined the NHS trust just weeks after the trust had spent £340,000 on hiring ambulances from them.
The EEAST is not, of course, alone in appointing a privateer to a senior role in the NHS. Last year the coalition appointed Simon Stevens as the new boss of NHS England, an appointment he officially took up an April 1st.
Stevens – who came from the giant US private healthcare company, United Healthcare, where he enjoyed the position of Global Head of Health – soon proved that his appointment was no April Fools Day joke when he announced that he intended to ‘re-organise’ the whole NHS in order to deal with a huge £30 billion funding shortfall caused by government cuts.
The only way Stevens can achieve this goal will be to oversee the closure of A&E departments and entire hospitals while his pledge to change the traditional culture of the NHS can only mean more private companies snapping up profitable contracts and leeching yet more money out of the health service.
On a grand scale, Stevens and the government will attempt to repeat for the whole NHS what has been done to the ambulance service – cut its money until the service can no longer operate and turn it over to the privateers.
With the government placing the privateers firmly in charge of the NHS to ‘oversee’ the cuts and the privatisation of the entire NHS, the question of defending the NHS from the profit hungry ‘health companies’ is now a burning issue for the working class.
There can be no hiding by the trade union leaders from this issue – in the face of all these attacks the TUC and the health unions have not lifted a finger in defence of jobs or hospitals. The time has come to demand that they immediately call an all-out general strike to defend the NHS.
Only by removing this government and going forward to a workers government can a free health service be guaranteed.
