MPs have been drafted in to investigate the “scandalous” £300m overspend on the health reforms.
Trade union Unite has written to the Health Select Committee and the Public Accounts Select Committee asking MPs to conduct an investigation into the costs of the reorganisation.
Rachael Maskell, head of health at Unite, also renewed the call for the long awaited release of the financial risks of the reforms as documented in the Health Act’s risk register.
Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt recently admitted the cost of the NHS reforms has risen by £300m to between £1.5bn and £1.6bn.
“The risk register may have contained warnings about the adverse financial impact of the reorganisation embedded in the Health and Social Care Act –the fall-out from which we are now witnessing in Jeremy Hunt’s admission,” said Maskell.
‘Unite repeatedly warned that the privatisation of the NHS would be a costly fiasco – and now the chickens have come home to roost to expose the folly of the government’s so-called reforms.
“The money spent on the reorganisation of the NHS for the benefit of private healthcare companies, whose priority is profits for shareholders at the expense of patient care, would have been better spent on frontline services for the sick and the ill.”
