The hidden NHS agenda

It is just six months since the Tory Health and Social Care Act paved the way for the systematic privatisation of our NHS.

In that time the deterioration of our heath service has occurred at a speed that has surprised even the most pessimistic.

Perfectly viable hospitals are apparently facing bankruptcy because the political will is not there to give them the help they need.

The fates of the South London Trust, Mid-Staffordshire Trust, Peterborough Trust and Sherwood Forest Trust are now in the hands, and at the whim, of the newly appointed Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt.

His preference, we know, is to engineer a way that these trusts can be broken up and sold off to private health-care interests like Circle, Serco and Virgin Care.

What we did not know during the passing of the NHS Bill but has now become abundantly clear is just who exactly will profit from the NHS carve-up.

Circle Health's aquisition of the first privatised NHS Hospital, we were told, was a franchise owned by the workers in Hinchingbrooke Hospital.

Since then it is clear that the major shareholders are four world hedge fund moguls who have gifted the Tory Party £1.4 million.

Likewise, Virgin Care's billion pounds in contracts is not the empowerment of community GPs that their media spokespersons would have us believe.

No, the main beneficiaries from Virign Care's meteoric rise in primary care are another group of hedge funds whose bosses have gifted the Tories more than £1m.

A similar picture has emerged for every single major private health company that is benefiting from the accelerating privatisation of our NHS.

We now know that the true intention of Messrs Hunt and Lansley is to line the pockets of the privateers who in turn support the Tory Party financially.

As well as the great carve-up, people who love the NHS have had to stand by and watch the great "run-down" of its services.

North Yorkshire Primary Care Trust has had to hand its books over to private consultancy firms which will now scurry through them figuring out ways to cut the quality of care, all in the name of efficiency savings.

It is already clear that this will result in fewer health visitors, fewer beds, no routine check-ups or follow-up tests.

The emerging picture nationwide is similarly disturbing. Some 42,000 NHS staff members have lost their jobs, 25 A&E wards are to close and all the while Health Secretary Hunt busies himself identifying the next round of hospitals he can target.

Aside from any ideological issues arising from the sacking of such a large number of NHS workers, the corresponding surge in agency staff expenditure - up 50 per cent - exposes the lunacy of the Tory freeze on NHS recruitment.

It is clear for all to see - patient services are in decline, NHS staff morale is in freefall and our NHS infrastructure is rapidly shrinking.

Circle Holdings says it is confident it can gain £8bn more in NHS contracts and is apparently eying Bedford Hospital and George Eliot Hospital in Nuneaton as its next targets. Virgin Care is rapidly consuming whole chunks of private care services, having recently been named as the preferred bidder for contracts in Lyme Regis and Devon.

Few can doubt that profit has replaced care and compassion as the main drivers in our health service.

Yet amid all of that misery, the main casualty remains untold.

The patient experience is without doubt the biggest victim of this reckless attack on our NHS.

The Care Quality Commission found patients in a Virgin hospital lying uncared for in their own urine.

Care UK has admitted that it lost thousands of patient records.

Spire Healthcare, BMI and other private hospitals have failed CQC inspections, yet still we refer our NHS patients to their hospitals by the thousands.

In Hinchingbrooke, the first ever privatised NHS hospital, patient satisfaction has tumbled from number one in the region in May to a ranking of 19 in the region today. Patient complaints have risen by a record 18 per cent at Hinchingbrooke as Circle failed to see suspected testicular cancer patients within the supposedly guaranteed 28 days.

As weekend cleaning staff in Mid-Yorkshire NHS Trust are sacked, is it any wonder that they have climbed to third in the nationwide league tables of MRSA and C difficile infections?

Worst of all, recent evidence has emerged that Serco and Virgin severely understaff their out-of-hours GP services and walk-in centres.

In some cases no qualified medical personnel were there to treat patients as they arrive.

So let us challenge the Tory mantra that public is bad and private is good. It has no basis in reality.

However little our mainstream media fails to report it there can be no doubt that the main casualty of Tory privatisation has been patient care.

Alan Milburn started much of the marketisation of our NHS with the creation of foundation hospitals and the large PFI contracts.

A future Labour government must draw a line in the sand and never return to the commodifying agenda that haunted the party under Tony Blair.

Our current leader Ed Miliband has vowed to scrap the NHS privatisation, and we want to believe him.

Andy Burnham, who campaigned determinedly to try to stop this NHS Bill ever becoming law, has vowed to repeal it should Labour win the next election.

These two men must realise that the very hopes of future generations of NHS patients rest on their shoulders.

They must make good their promises and ensure that future Labour NHS policy marks a clear departure from the privatisation agenda, otherwise they will have condemned us all to the mercy of Swiss and US hedge fund moguls.

Grahame Morris is Labour MP for Easington.