Is Carillion’s Collapse Major Impact On NHS Being Ignored?

Any subsequent deal could put banks in financial charge of hospitals!

The collapse of this mega-structure of a private company that is buried within the psyche of the Tory Party is a warning that the future complete privatisation of the NHS will be a cataclysmic event upon the nation’s health and will result in deaths, injury and the propagation of illness!

Currently Carillion is involved in Liverpool’s new hospital development which is over 12 months late in being completed. But the problem goes much further than that when you consider these facts of Carillion’s involvement with the NHS:

* employs over 8,000 people in healthcare

* responsible for NHS buildings including:

+ 200 operating theatres
+
300 critical-care beds
+ 11,500 in-patient beds

* prepares more than18,500 patient meals per day

* manages over1.5m calls per year

Carillion employs 43,000 workers worldwide, including nearly 20,000 in the UK.

It went from being a construction company to being one the Government’s preferred private companies used to outsource public services. This started under the Labour Government in the 1990s

One of the UK government’s biggest contractors, it currently works on what many see as a sheer waste of money that will suck UK jobs from the regions into London – the HS2 project.

It also builds, maintains and operates hospitals for the NHS, and manages nearly 900 schools: very badly considering the amount of asbestos that is left remaining in schools with no plan to remove most of it.

In the case of the Royal Liverpool hospital, completion was due in March 2017 but, according to industry website Construction Enquirer, the discovery last year of cracks in two concrete beams, which required significant remedial work, pushed the handover date back. This also questions the quality of the work being done by Carillion!

Less than ten days ago, it became clear that Royal Hospital project had been hit by a further setback; ensuring that the new 28th February 2018 completion date will again be missed by the contractor.

At a time when the NHS is at breaking point, the potential collapse of a key private partner is an apocalyptic prospect for UK healthcare and which will no doubt please certain hardly Tories who hate the NHS and want it taken over by American Healthcare companies.

This may well give them a perfect excuse by claiming to the public, we cannot possibly fund both this collapse of a main contract holder of NHS buildings and properties at the same time as funding the NHS any further!

The scale of its work for the NHS – without even considering work it does for the Ministry of Defence or Prison Service – will no doubt focus the minds of ministers on a rescue deal.

The whole rationale for PPP (public private partnership) is that you transfer risk to the company that takes the contract. But, in reality the limit of that risk is the balance sheet of the that company.

If you move beyond that,In the case of Carillion’s balance sheet, this has now become a crisis for the government and our NHS!

Once again, the public will have to bale out a private company as it did with the banks, whilst the future of the NHS is now looking extremely bleak indeed!

Source: C Ingram / The Guardian / Dr Lauren Gavaghan (via Twitter)