NHS: Tories Quietly Selling Off NHS Assets

Plans to sell off £5.7bn of NHS assets across the UK are set to be approved in September in what some worried Opposition MPs have deemed a “fire sale”. Property deals between private firms and the NHS are expected to be signed off in a couple of weeks, getting rid of valuable NHS land and other assets for good.

Savings at what cost?

Our Government aims to sell off a total of £5bn worth of public sector land by 2020. The NHS has been told it must contribute given that it is one of the largest property owners in the UK.

The Department of Health says that selling surplus NHS land and buildings will reduce running costs, generate income for the service and make way for much-needed housing.

On the surface that sounds like a good idea but NHS records show that the amount of land for sale in England alone has more than doubled in the last year.

The Department has been accused of quietly doubling the properties on the chopping block and conducting a secret high-speed sale. The details of the sell-off were unearthed by the House of Commons Library as it analysed Health Department data for Labour MPs.

Covert Conservatives

Labour has accused the Conservatives of selling off these NHS assets to desperately fill the health service’s financial hole. Jeremy Corbyn’s team researched the 543 NHS sites for sale and found that 117 of those listed as surplus were actually still in medical or clinical use.

Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth (left) said that while the NHS clearly needs an “urgent injection of funds” to make up for past Tory under-funding “the answer is not a blanket sell-off of sites which are currently being used for patient care.”

He argues that the Government must provide the funding instead of stripping hospitals of assets and “forcing them into a fire sale”.

According to Ashworth, the Tories have refused to “fully answer reasonable questions” about the sale, raising concerns that more sites will soon follow. The Health Department insisted that only truly idle land would be considered and all revenue raised made would go back into the NHS.

Healthy People, Strained Healthcare

The NHS is struggling on all fronts. The service is underpaid, understaffed and overburdened. That will only get worse as the population ages and grows and we will find ourselves in desperate need of more hospitals and land.

By that time the Government will be unable to buy back the NHS assets it is now selling. The Government’s “Sustainability and Transformation Plans” for the NHS claim that the need for more healthcare will decline steadily in the future as people lead healthier lives.

Such optimism is encouraging  but ill-founded. We may be looking forward to the arrival of a new smoke-free generation but rates for cancer, obesity, alcohol-related illnesses and neurological illnesses among many others are on the rise.

Medical breakthroughs and new treatments mean that people are living longer – the NHS’s effectiveness actually increases the population burden. On top of this the provision of new types of treatment will require more NHS assets and may increase the number of people coming into hospitals and clinics. The HIV drug trial announced this month is a perfect example: an additional treatment bringing in new patients.

Housing for Whom?

The NHS Confederation, the membership body for organisations providing healthcare, has asked the Government to step away and leave the land to the NHS so it can be used for staff housing. The confederation says the housing crisis is contributing to the growing difficulty of filling healthcare jobs as salary caps have limited staff’s ability to buy and rent, especially in areas like London.

The Health Department’s suggestion that sold-off land could be used for “much needed homes” conveniently forgets who it is that needs the homes – public sector workers priced out of their work areas.

Unsurprisingly the highest valued site on the surplus list is in London. The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in Stanmore (left) is worth £38.75m.

Londoners shouldn’t hold their breath waiting to see if any of the proposed privately-owned housing will be considered “affordable”.

This quiet sell-off comes months after Theresa May was criticised for her adoption of the Naylor report twhich recommended selling off NHS assets. Dr Kailash Chand, former deputy chairman of the British Medical Association, called the report “an outline to sell off the NHS”. BMA officials researching the report were outraged at the proposal, and their fears that the Tories are privatising the NHS piece by piece are becoming a scary reality – and it’s all happening without too much scrutiny.

 

by Jo Davey

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