Public need not private greed!
Max McGee, Coventry Socialist Party
Health secretary Wes Streeting is reportedly considering reintroducing Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs) to fund infrastructure spending in the NHS. Scrapped by Tory chancellor Philip Hammond in 2018 because they are such a rip-off, bringing them back would enable big business to profit even more from our health service.
Brought in by Tory prime minister John Major, PFIs were part of a raft of privatisation measures introduced into the NHS, expanded upon massively by Tony Blair and his New Labour government. Private companies compete to fund hospital building projects, locking them into long-term debt and massive interest repayments, plus additional charges and fees to the NHS. NHS trusts in England with current PFI debt will have to pay back on average almost eight times the initial capital put into their trusts!
In my city, we know the impact of PFI well. The PFI scheme at University Hospital Coventry & Warwickshire – commonly referred to as Walsgrave runs until 2042. By then it will have ‘hoovered up’ all local health services in Warwickshire.
Hospital parking charges
PFI’s most visible impact is with the parking charges. They cost staff over £10 a day in parking, if they aren’t lucky enough to get a workplace pass. And patients and their visitors have to pay through the nose.
Walsgrave’s NHS trust takes the most from car parking charges of anywhere in England; it’s free in Scotland and Wales. Yet nurses and junior doctors were forced out on strike in 2022 because of being underpaid, with some being forced to rely on food banks.
Coventry Socialist Party members have been working towards the 15,000 signatures needed to force a debate in the Labour-led city council, currently on 12,000.
We need to kick out private profit from our NHS. Cancel the PFI deals and the debts – the vultures have had too much. And put the whole health industry – including the big pharmaceutical companies and suppliers – under democratic workers’ control.
