Paul Hutcheon won’t do his sums as NHS England spend 74 times as much pro rata on private hospitals

From the Daily Record yesterday:

The SNP has been accused of “shameless hypocrisy” after health boards spent nearly £130m sending patients to private hospitals. Humza Yousaf’s party this week urged Labour to rule out “privatisation” of the NHS.

They hit out at the “expanded role” for the private sector and dismissed Labour leader Keir Starmer as a Blairite. But new figures released under FOI show the amount given to the private sector for treating NHS patients is on the rise under the SNP-led Government.

In 2018/29, the total stood at £24.1m, before surging to £32.7m and falling to £15.4m in the first full year of the pandemic. It rose to £24.2m in 2021/22 and jumped again to £31.4m last year.

The total since 2018 stands at £128m.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/snp-government-row-over-128m-30403403

You know where I’m going but the information is more of a surprise than even I expected:

NHS commissioners’ spending on private healthcare increased 27 per cent to more than £18bn in 2020-21, with pandemic effects causing it to rise faster than spend on NHS trusts and general practice.

https://www.hsj.co.uk/finance-and-efficiency/nhs-spend-on-private-healthcare-rose-27-per-cent-in-a-year/7031836.article#:~:text=NHS%20commissioners’%20spending%20on%20private,NHS%20trusts%20and%20general%20practice.

So, all things being equal (I know they never are), NHS England might have been expected to spend 10 times as much, £242 million.

They spent £18 billion, 74.4 times as much.

9 thoughts on “Paul Hutcheon won’t do his sums as NHS England spend 74 times as much pro rata on private hospitals”

  1. Labour should be embarrassed at how much money LABOUR MPs are receiving from PRIVATE HEALTH companies instead of complaining about Scotland’s NHS using Private provision to reduce waiting times .
    Is Starmer being criticised for having his hand in the PRIVATE HEALTH till ?
    Is Wes Streeting ( shadow Health minister ) ?
    Labour hypocrisy – again !

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  2. This is as good an example as any of the distorted reporting to Scots by Scotland’s media.
    The context-free reporting by Paul Hutcheon is little different to any of his colleagues in other outlets – Most always the articles are a gilded copy/paste of what was created by political party spads, featuring the FOI fairy and some creative accounting to derive a big number for ‘shock’ effect….

    In this case it was one of ACH-him’s umbrella-holders, the obligatory rhetoric from the suit itself, presumably the Dame Tsunami Baillie garbage was separately requested.

    That SG’s figures are as low as they are by comparison is testimony to the resistance of SG to the relentless march of Tory privatisation in England – It can’t be easy given the real terms defunding and consequent effects on SG funding from HMG – Then they have to contend with a media and political opposition essentially enabling the Tory destruction blinded by their own political ambitions.

    Baillie and ACH-him make much of their historical connection to the formation of the NHS, but those pioneers must be spinning in their graves over what has been done to the NHS and the hypocrisy of modern ‘politics’.

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  3. Scotland spends £13Billion on SNHS + social care. Westminster spends. £125Billion. Scotland has to mitigate the cuts. The ConDems tried to cut NHS spending £20Billion from 2015 to 2020. Westminster spent £270Billion, over two years, on Covid funding. Much was defrauded. £370Billion over a lifetime.

    £13Billion a year for ten years go to decommissioning Nuclear. £130Billion+. Flying nuclear waste around the world. Increased Military spending £5Billion. Instead of the NHS. Killing people rather than saving them. Mismanaging Covid for Brexit. An absolute disaster. The Tories have had it.

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