Private sector’s role in cutting NHS waiting lists in England to rise by 20%
Private hospitals will provide NHS patients in England with as many as a million extra appointments, scans and operations a year as part of the government’s drive to end the care backlog.The move represents a significant expansion of the independent sector’s role in helping the health service tackle the long waits for treatment that built up under the Conservatives.Keir Starmer unveiled the NHS’s growing use of private healthcare in a major speech on Monday in which he set out his new elective reform plan to address a waiting list for planned care on which 6.4 million people are waiting for 7.5m treatments.
Private operators will receive an extra £2.5bn a year in government funding, taking the total to almost £16bn, if they deliver the uplift in care and treatment the prime minister outlined.The initiative is a key element in a plan intended to ensure that patients no longer have to wait more than 18 weeks for non-urgent hospital care by spring 2029.The independent sector already provides about 5m outpatient appointments, diagnostic tests and operations a year to the NHS – about 10% of all its elective activity.The planned further 1m appointments would increase that by about 20%.
The private sector currently receives £12.3bn a year for treating NHS patients, according to last month’s Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) annual report.Its relationship with the NHS has become so entwined that private hospitals now carry out almost one in five health service-funded operations on people stuck on the waiting list.They already undertake about a quarter of all hip and knee replacements performed on NHS patients and the same proportion of ophthalmic interventions such as cataract removals.The extra capacity that the NHS and independent sector partnership agreement is expected to produce will help the health service cut waiting times for people facing particularly long delays for certain types of care, notable gynaecology and orthopaedic treatment.
The deal will “encourage longer-term contractual relationships to be established” between NHS organisations and private sector providers, the DHSC said.Starmer said in his speech that he would not let critics of NHS privatisation stop him relying more heavily on the independent sector, because people’s health needs must come first.“When the waiting lists have ballooned to 7.5m, we will not let ideology or old ways of doing things stand in the way of getting people’s lives back on track.“It would be a dereliction of duty not to use every available resource to get patients the care they so desperately need,” he said.
Sign up to First EditionOur morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what’s happening and why it mattersafter newsletter promotionBut the co-chair of Keep Our NHS Public, Dr Tony O’Sullivan, said the private sector was a parasite that was damaging the health service and that it would lose out as a result of the deal because its own staff would provide most of the expansion of private care.“Just as in the 2000s, the NHS could provide those million appointments and build sustainable capacity if funding was invested to reopen theatres, provide equipment, support more NHS GPs, community and hospital staff,” he said.“That is value for money.Keir Starmer claims to set ‘ideology’ aside whilst choosing to invest in expensive long-term private sector contracts.Private ‘spare capacity’ relies on NHS staff and funding to resource their expansion.
“Keir Starmer’s ‘choice’ is to ignore the soaring profits enjoyed by the private sector operating on NHS patients for routine cataract surgery whilst NHS eye departments lose that funding and their staff are unable to treat many patients with other sight-threatening conditions in time,“The private sector needs NHS funding to be diverted and NHS staff to reduce their NHS hours to staff ‘spare capacity’,Feeding the parasite undermines the health of the NHS host,”The chief executive of the Independent Healthcare Providers Network, David Hare, said the new agreement was “a clear statement from government, the NHS and independent sector that independent providers are a critical part of the NHS’s long-term recovery and renewal”,
Apple says it will update AI feature after inaccurate news alerts
Apple has said it will update an artificial intelligence feature that has issued inaccurate news alerts on its latest iPhones, including that a man accused of killing a US insurance boss had shot himself and that the tennis star Rafael Nadal had come out as gay.The tech company said it was developing a software update that would “further clarify” when news notifications were actually summaries generated by the company’s Apple Intelligence system. It said the update would be rolled out in the coming weeks.It follows a formal complaint by the BBC in December, when news alerts branded with the corporation’s logo told some iPhone users that Luigi Mangione, who is accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare chief executive, Brian Thompson, had shot himself. Mangione is alive and being held at a prison in Brooklyn
British AI startup with government ties is developing tech for military drones
A company that has worked closely with the UK government on artificial intelligence safety, the NHS and education is also developing AI for military drones.The consultancy Faculty AI has “experience developing and deploying AI models on to UAVs”, or unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a defence industry partner company.Faculty has emerged as one of the most active companies selling AI services in the UK. Unlike the likes of OpenAI, Deepmind or Anthropic, it does not develop models itself, instead focusing on reselling models, notably from OpenAI, and consulting on their use in government and industry.Faculty gained particular prominence in the UK after working on data analysis for the Vote Leave campaign under Dominic Cummings, who went on to serve as Boris Johnson’s adviser
Rural internet deserts in England and Wales to finally get fast broadband
The last corners of England and Wales yet to be covered by a £5bn push to widen fast broadband could finally get access to rapid downloads, streaming and video calls after the government announced £289m in new taxpayer-funded contracts enabling coverage.After some people in broadband blackspots were forced to turn to Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite-enabled internet connections, the latest deals to boost connectivity should give 131,000 households and businesses in village and rural internet deserts gigabit-level fibre coverage – allowing a high-definition movie to be downloaded in around a minute.The announcement comes after years of frustration over a mostly rural-urban digital divide. Campaigners have said slow internet in the countryside inhibits business, restricts access to online health and education services, and can worsen social isolation.The new contracts to lay full-fibre connections in areas not reached by private investment would apply in north Wales, including Anglesey, south-west Wales, Shropshire, Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Essex and the north-east of England, the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) announced
LA tech entrepreneur nearly misses flight after getting trapped in robotaxi
A tech entrepreneur based in Los Angeles became trapped in a malfunctioning self-driving car for several minutes last month, causing him to nearly miss a flight, he said.Mike Johns was riding in an autonomous Waymo car on his way to Sky Harbor airport in Phoenix when the vehicle began driving around a parking lot repeatedly, circling eight times as he was on the phone seeking help from the company.“I got my seat belt on. I can’t get out of the car. Has this been hacked? What’s going on?” he can be heard telling a Waymo representative in a video he posted to LinkedIn three weeks ago
Cost of assuring nuclear safety from millennium bug was well worth it | Letter
In your article (How a batch of tinned meat fostered fears of the millennium bug, 31 December) you quote Martyn Thomas, who led Deloitte Consulting’s Y2K work, rightly saying that heroic efforts successfully avoided major disasters arising from the Y2K software issues. At the time, I was a member of the advisory committee on the safety of nuclear installations. For nuclear systems, the major goal was not so much about finding and then fixing bugs – although that was done, of course. Rather, it was to do with re-establishing confidence in safety that might have been compromised by potential bugs.It was expensive, but this expenditure was not wasted, as some still claim
Hooray! A new year gift from Elon Musk | Brief letters
For the past six months, “things can only get better” had seemed a redundant hope. And then along comes a headline to disprove it (Elon Musk turns on Nigel Farage and calls for new leader of Reform, 5 January).Les BrightExeter My prediction for 2025 was that the narcissistic egos of Nigel Farage, Elon Musk and Donald Trump would inevitably lead to them turning on each other, leading to their collective self-destruction. I wish I’d placed a bet on it.Sarah JamesMonmouth Re Christine Evans’ account of operating in Africa while the nurse held a surgery textbook open for her (Letters, 3 January)
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