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Remember `Flashman`s`pre election promise not to change our NHS..?
NHS privatisation fears deepen over £1bn deal
Biggest health contract yet - for services including end-of-life care - is condemned by Labour
as 'audacious sell-off'
The value of the deal, to provide health services including end-of-life care for older people in
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, far outstrips the previous record of £450m, where Virgin Care
now provides a range of NHS services across Surrey.
The size of the contract on offer has sparked interest from a large number of private firms and
claims that the privatisation of the NHS is increasing in pace. Virgin is believed to be sizing up a
bid, as is another health provider, Circle, which operates the only privately run NHS hospital in the UK -
Hinchingbrooke, Cambridgeshire - and Serco, which has won contracts to provide several public
services and was recently castigated by MPs over major flaws in its provision of out-of-hours GP
services in Cornwall.
The move is the latest example of how under the coalition growing numbers of NHS services are
being put out to tender, and usually won by private operators.
Critics, including Labour, which called the new tender the "most audacious sell-off to date", say
the increasing multitude of providers is leading to the fragmentation of the NHS and will undermine
ministers' stated objective of ensuring that patient care is more integrated. Ministers, though,
welcome the trend and support the health service's right to strike deals with providers who can
offer services at the lowest price at a time when it is under huge financial pressure.
Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, said: "One year to the day that Danny Boyle famously
celebrated before the eyes of the world an NHS that puts people before profits, we find a government
stealthily breaking it up and selling it off.
"This is the most audacious sell-off to date and evidence of how, in the wake of the Health and
Social Care Act, the scale and pace of NHS privatisation is ramping up."