Is there really 'a secret plan' to privatise NHS’? Labour leadership contender Owen Smith has attacked what he calls a 'secret' Conservative plan to privatise the National Health service.
Labour leadership hopeful Owen Smith has accused Jeremy Corbyn of using his previous career as a lobbyist for the pharmaceuticals industry as “a stick with which to beat me”. In a speech on the NHS at the University of Salford on Monday, Smith said he was not ashamed to have worked for companies that make medicines to treat conditions such as cancer, diabetes and asthma, and that big pharmaceutical firms provided an important service to the NHS. “The NHS doesn’t make medicines. It helps with research, but it can’t make medicines,” he said. “It would be physically impossible for the NHS to be able to trial medicines around the world, so of course we will always rely on external forces, companies essentially, to be able to make medicines.” Analysis How much is the government really privatising the NHS? Figures show privatisation to be less of an explosion that Owen Smith warns about and more a gradual, inexorable rise in outsourcing of services Read more Smith’s early campaign h...