From PPE contracts to political appointees, the government is embedding private providers at the heart of the health service
Cronyism and outsourcing have defined the government’s response to the pandemic, from the “VIP lane” for personal protective equipment (PPE) suppliers with connections to the Tory party to the privatised track and trace system so flawed it was described by Sage as only being of “marginal impact”. But less attention has been paid to what the longer-term impact of these decisions might be. Far from being an aberration, the government’s pandemic response reflects its commitment to embedding private interests at the heart of the state and stealthily chipping away at our most valued national institution.
As Sir David King, a former chief scientific adviser, and the special representative for climate change under Boris Johnson when he was foreign secretary, recently told the Guardian, the government is slipping through plans to “effectively privatise the NHS by stealth” in “the name of a pandemic”. This story of privatisation is not one of wholesale transfer, such as the sell-off of British Gas or Royal Mail, but rather of a gradual hollowing out, a process that has been further accelerated by the pandemic and will continue under the Johnson government. In 2010, for example, the NHS spent £4.1bn on private sector contracts; by 2019, this had more than doubled to £9.2bn.
