NHS Privatisation And Hinchingbrooke NHS Hospital Trust And Circle Group

EDM number 685 in 2014-15, proposed by Roger Godsiff on 13/01/2015.
Categorised under the topics of Health finance and Health services.

That this House notes with the gravest concern the recent announcement that Circle Group, a private healthcare company, will pull out of a 10-year contract to run Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Cambridgeshire - the first hospital to be privatised - which commenced in 2012; further notes that the company had the right to terminate its franchise in the event that support payments it had to make to run the hospital exceeded five million pounds; considers it appalling that Steve Melton, chief executive of Circle, should cite unprecedented A&E attendances and inconsistent and conflicting regulatory regimes as reasons for pulling out while not mentioning severely reduced expectations of profitability and share price pressure; further notes that the Care Quality Commission viewed Circle's running of Hinchingbrooke Hospital as inadequate; believes that this is yet another example of poorly thought-out commissioning decisions and the Government's lack of understanding of the implications of pushing NHS services into unsustainable models provided by commercially driven private providers or enterprises; and calls on the Secretary of State for Health, as a matter of urgency, to abandon the current commissioning model which allows private companies to cherry-pick the most profitable services, leave the NHS to deal with the difficult cases, and walk away from the contract if they feel it is insufficiently profitable, and to replace this with a service which prioritises public health not private profit, as the NHS was founded to do.

This motion has been signed by a total of 7 MPs.