Bill Esterson MP has criticised Liberal Democrats for failing to support an amendment in Parliament that opposed US companies “taking over” the NHS.
The MP for Sefton Central said the amendment, which called for the repeal of the Health and Social Care Act, was necessary to provide assurances about the future privatisation of the health service.
The Liberal Democrats abstained on the amendment, while the Conservatives voted against, meaning the amendment was lost.
Mr Esterson, who is also a Shadow Business and International Trade Minister, said: “The amendment called for the Government to protect the NHS from future trade agreements that would allow private companies, from the US for instance, to compete for services including in the NHS. Labour opposes US companies taking over the NHS. These companies put profit before public health and allowing them into our NHS means it will be harder to make policy decisions in the public interest.
“The Lib Dems failed to support the amendment, and in turn failed to support the NHS. They voted through the Health & Social Care Act as members of the Coalition government, the very Act which opened up the NHS to such a huge amount of privatisation and which we are saying should be repealed.”
The MP said NHS staff were working in often intolerable situations and that new health facilities in Maghull and Southport were further away than ever.
He said: “I pay tribute to all our hard-working national health service and social care staff. They go the extra mile every day for us and our families, doing their best despite a decade of cutbacks and the tightest financial squeeze in the history of the NHS.
“Our NHS staff are treating more patients every day than ever before. I am afraid, however, that we have a Government who are still expecting our staff to deliver care in the most intolerable working conditions, from bed cuts to staffing shortages and equipment breaking down every day. The dismal consequence of this decade of underfunding and cuts sees patient care suffering and standards of care deteriorating.
“We need new health facilities in Maghull and a walk-in centre in Southport. These are now further away than ever.”
The MP said the Health and Social Care Bill, which was introduced by the coalition government, had led to deteriorating standards in the health service. He said: “Last year, 2.9 million people waited beyond four hours in A&E. Since 2010, over 15,000 beds have been cut from the NHS and bed occupancy levels have risen to 98 per cent. When Labour left office, around 62,000 patients were designated as trolley waits, which was unacceptable, but today that number is 629,000.”
The MP said a backlog in repairs was putting patients at risk: “The money needed for the repair bill has now risen to £6.5 billion, and half of this is considered to be serious risk.”
Mr Esterson described how the Health and Social Care Act forces the NHS to welcome private providers into the service, and a future post-Brexit trade deal with the US puts it at further risk. He said: “Clinical commissioning groups are forced to put all contracts out to tender. Some £25 billion-worth of public money has gone to the private sector, taking money away from our hospitals and other NHS services. This Act needs to be repealed.
“While it is on the statute book, it runs the risk of the NHS being sold off in a Trump trade deal. Under World Trade Organisation rules, public services can only be excluded from trade deals where there is no competition with private providers or where they are not run for profit, but private health providers already operate in competition with public NHS providers. A Trump trade deal would lock in the privatisation of our NHS and any promises from the Government that the NHS would be ‘off the table’ in any trade talks does not stand up to scrutiny.
“In fact, via these trade deals foreign companies end up with greater rights than UK domestic service providers. Foreign companies will be able to sue our government if we take public health policy decisions the companies think will damage their profits, like plain paper packaging of cigarettes or regulating polluting diesel cars. UK companies cannot sue the government in this way. Foreign companies even have their own private courts in which to bring their multi million pound law suits.
“This is not taking back control. And it is not just about selling off the NHS. We know that Donald Trump wants to break our pharmaceutical market as well, forcing us to buy more expensive drugs from the US and crippling our national health service.
“The Lib Dems failed to support our amendment because they co-wrote the Health and Social Care Act and support privatisation in the NHS.”
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