Private companies can deliver exactly what the NHS needs

The end of the private management of Hinchingbrooke Hospital is not a dagger in the heart of NHS competition and reform. It does not mean, as the BBC’s business editor wrote today, that a private business cannot run an acute hospital (which is an extraordinary statement given that such businesses routinely do so in other countries). Competition is at the heart of the NHS England Five Year Forward View (5YFV), which all major political parties have supported.

The degree of successful private sector delivery in and around health is often underestimated. The much-used figure is that 6 per cent of the NHS budget is spent on private providers (i.e. just over £6 billion a year). That obscures the fact that some parts of the NHS use the private sector much more extensively.  Private companies play a vital role in NHS provision of mental health for people with severe needs, as they do for state education for children with learning difficulties.