Sack the bosses not the nurses

PRIVATE MANAGEMENT Consultants are the corporate equivalent of ambulance-chasers. NHS trusts in deficit - they want to help. Help themselves, that is.

Alistair Tice

A Yorkshire Post survey says accountants and management consultants picked up fees totalling over £4 million since last April in this region alone. They're making massive profits paid for by our money to advise Trust bosses what services to cut and how many staff to sack!

Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust has already shut nine wards, closed 200 beds and lost 640 jobs in the last three years. Now they are paying Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) £100,000 a month to advise them how to cut another £85 million in the next three years!

Socialist Party members will be protesting outside PwC offices in Leeds on Thursday 26 October, demanding "Sack the Bosses, not the Nurses."

It's not just in Leeds. PwC have already pocketed over £1 million from Hull Hospitals Trust and £300,000 from Scarborough, Whitby and Ryedale PCT.

It's not just PwC either. The Department of Health (headquartered in Leeds) have funded "financial assesments" and "turnaround plans" by accountants KPMG and McKinsey consultants in ten other Trusts in Yorkshire, but refuse to say at what cost.

Private management consultants are estimated to have cost the NHS £1 billion, roughly equivalent to last year's total NHS deficit. The true cost though will be measured in hospital and ward closures, job losses and more privatisation. Don't let this happen.