NHS beds reduced due to private funding initiative

It appears Ged Taylor is confused in his letter of response on the NHS (March 3).

It could be this is deliberate to try to muddy the waters over Labour’s privatisation of services within the NHS.

My comments on the Government’s plans were clear. The NHS will continue to be a publicly funded service free at the point of use. This is contrary to the claims by Mr Taylor and his fellow travellers, who are claiming the NHS is being sold off.

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It was certainly not contradictory of me to state that Labour started the process of privatisation in the NHS.

In addition to the examples I used in my earlier letter I could also point to the use of PFI by Labour. Under this private funding initiative hospitals were built and run by private companies.

Dr Max Pemberton recently wrote that “The problem is PFI hospitals have, on average, 30% fewer beds than those they were replacing, principally because hospital beds are expensive to provide in terms of space, equipment and staff. As PFI was rolled out across the country the number of beds was being slowly reduced.”

As Ged said, when this privatisation was introduced by Labour the patient’s interests ceased to be the priority. I will agree with him there.

Alan Wright