Naylor Review: The NHS Report the Tories Love

The Naylor Review is as boring as it sounds but important things are not always fun. We can’t make a report about NHS land and asset proposals exciting to read but it’s important that everyone understands what this report is and how the Tories plan to use it – with potentially devastating consequences for the future of the NHS.

What is it?

Released in March 2017, the Naylor Review is an independent report by former NHS Trust boss Sir Robert Naylor (left). The review makes recommendations on how the Government can fund NHS reforms by selling off redundant land and buildings that are too expensive to maintain.

Theresa May said in a BBC interview that this review is central to her party’s plans for the NHS, making it a pretty important document for the UK. It might be only 46 pages long but it’s about to have profound and long-lasting effects on our health service.

Selling off the NHS

There’s around £2-5b worth of unused NHS land, with £3bn of that in London alone. Selling this land off to the private sector could help plug NHS financial holes and free up land for housing development, which could be prioritised for NHS staff.

Getting rid of inefficient buildings could save the NHS £500m in maintenance fees each year. If less debt and more housing sounds too good to be true you may well be right.

Fatal Extraction

There’s a darker worry underlying this sale. Some think the Tories are using the Naylor Review to shrink the NHS and hand its assets to the private sector. There’s also a suggestion that this so-called “surplus” isn’t surplus at all. Some of the buildings listed were forced to close through financial and staff shortages, meaning they’re much-needed but desperately underfunded thanks to the Government.

May promised to not only spend £8b on the NHS but also fund the “most ambitious program on investment and buildings and technology the NHS has ever seen”. When asked if that extra investment would come from the pledged £8b, the PM said it would instead be funded by an additional £10b from a “variety of sources”.

May hasn’t plucked this figure from the sky. The Naylor Review evaluated surplus NHS assets as being worth £10b. That makes it pretty clear that the Tory NHS investment money will come from selling off NHS investments.

Blackmail

The controversy doesn’t end there. The report determines that any hospitals failing or refusing to meet sales expectations won’t be allowed “to access public capital funding”.

That means any hospitals unable to meet the sales demands won’t see a penny of this so-called ambitious investment money. Access to life-saving technology and new buildings will be held hostage.

Bribery

The report says action is urgent and recommends accelerating land sales by offering hospitals a “2 for 1 offer”. Effectively any sales revenue that comes in will be doubled through public funds and given straight to the hospitals for building projects.

But this scheme will only run for a few years and it is on a first-come first-served basis, meaning hospitals will be selling off land as quickly as possible to private developers. That could lead to bad deals, poor planning and a lack of foresight into what the repercussions could be for the NHS.

The said reality is that the NHS is in such dire funding straits that if the Tories win, hospitals will have no choice but to do as they demand.

Privatisation Plague

Former deputy chair of the British Medical Association, Dr Kailash Chand agreed with worried Brits that the report was “an outline to sell off the NHS”. He  deemed May’s plans for the health service “scandalous”.

The irony of the Naylor Review is that it claims the current NHS predicament can be laid at the feet of NHS privatisation and reorganisations, even citing the Tory Health and Social Care Act of 2012.

That Act abolished regional and district health authorities, which Naylor says did well in managing and representing various estate functions and buildings.

Since their abolition, “continuous reform has eroded estates’ capabilities and increased reliance on the private sector, leaving the NHS with a lack of regional and national strategic estates planning capability”. Privatising our NHS isn’t the cure – it’s the disease.

 

by Jo Davey

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