Health and Care Bill 2021-22

Dear constituent,

Thank you for contacting me about the Health and Care Bill 2021-22 and NHS restructuring.

I am concerned that this is the wrong Bill at the wrong time. It represents a rushed, top-down reorganisation that will fail to integrate health and social care, erode local accountability, and give powers to the Health Secretary to hand major contracts to the private sector without scrutiny. Most importantly, it will not improve the standards of care for patients or address chronic workforce shortages.

Along with my colleagues, I voted against the Bill at second and third reading.

There are widespread concerns that private sector involvement in NHS services has created a fragmented and marketised system. The Health and Social Care Act 2012, which I have consistently opposed, introduced competitive tendering, forced privatisation, and prevented proper integration.

While this Bill overturns many aspects of the 2012 Act - including an end to compulsory competitive tendering - I am concerned that it allows further outsourcing by permitting the private sector to sit on local boards. And it does not reinstate the NHS as the default provider of services.

At every stage, the Opposition has sought to amend the Bill to remove any possibility that private firms can have any role on the boards of the new Integrated Care Systems. While Ministers brought forward their own amendment to prevent directors of private healthcare companies from sitting on the new boards, I do not believe this goes far enough.

There is, in my view, an incompatibility between the aims of private companies and the aims of the NHS. A company’s primary concern is the shareholders, not the patients. While I supported an amendment to the Bill that would block private providers from sitting on NHS decision-making boards, Government MPs voted against it and it was defeated. I am disappointed that a further Opposition amendment to ensure transparency around the awarding of contracts to non-NHS providers was also defeated by the Government.

I am committed to upholding the NHS’s founding principles as a comprehensive, integrated, and public NHS that is there for all of us when we need it. I will continue to resist any plans to allow further privatisation as the Bill progresses through Parliament.

Thank you once again for contacting me about this issue.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Dowd MP