By Andy Ford, Unite NHS union rep
NHS workers in the north-west were dismayed to see that Virgin Health had won a re-run contact process to run a £104 million contract for NHS Health Visiting across Lancashire awarded to them back in June.
In June the Tory-controlled Lancashire County Council announced that they had decided to award the contract for health visiting in the county to Virgin Health, not the existing NHS providers. They claimed Virgin had scored two points more than the NHS bidders.
The two trusts concerned, Blackpool Teaching Hospitals and Lancashire Care, lodged a legal challenge which resulted in a re-run of the tender process. But the County Council has just announced that the re-run has resulted in exactly the same outcome. If the Trusts do not appeal further the service will transfer to Virgin in April 2019 and 160 NHS staff will find themselves employed by Branson’s outfit.
They will transfer under TUPE rules, which means that existing staff keep their NHS pay, terms and conditions, at least initially, and under the ‘Fair Deal for Pensions’ they can still be members of the NHS pension scheme. For most NHS workers their biggest single asset is their pension, which despite all the attacks and chipping away by government, is still far better than anything on offer from the private pensions industry.
Paradoxically, the Fair Deal for Pensions, which was negotiated at the end of the pension strikes of 2011/12, actually facilitates outsourcing of NHS workers. Previously, health workers were much more inclined to band together to resist privatisation and transfers but now many will say “I’m keeping my pension, and I’ll be gone in five years anyway”.
Also, health visiting is a profession in crisis, even within the NHS. Underfunding and constant re-organisation have taken their toll and chronic staff shortages mean that stress is endemic. Unite the Union recommend that health visitors should have a workload of no more than 300 children under five years old. But almost everyone is working above that level, with caseloads of four or five hundred being quite common. The stress of dealing with so many deprived and disadvantaged children is compounded by quasi-legal rules on safeguarding which means that everyone is terrified of their records being dragged through a serious case review or a court case. Many health visitors end up completing their records in their own time, at weekends or evenings, because of high caseloads and staff shortages.
“It couldn’t be much worse”
This might explain why one of the Lancashire health visitors said to me that she wasn’t bothered about a transfer to Virgin as “It couldn’t be much worse than it is for us now”. That probably is not the view of the majority, but there will be plenty who feel that way. Very few health visitors now are prepared to be union reps, mainly due to pressure of workload. If you go and do a disciplinary hearing for a day or a morning, all your caseload will be waiting for you on return.
The County Council could be in for a rude awakening. In January Private Eye analysed the finances of Virgin Health, describing it as a “A Carillion in waiting”. On turnover of £252 million up to March 2017, Virgin declared a loss of £15.9 million. It would seem that the strategy is to bid low to get the work and sort out the finance afterwards, or else to increase charges once the NHS competition has been knocked out. They are no strangers to legal action against the NHS to get or retain contracts.
Private Eye showed that the company’s losses are covered by transfers from other Virgin enterprises, although which ones not exactly are shown in the accounts. The same accounts say that no profits are expected in the “foreseeable future”.
This means that Virgin Health is only viable for as long as Richard Branson is prepared to continue authorising subsidies of millions of pounds to Virgin Care from his tax-free base in the British Virgin Islands. Hardly a secure basis for such a vital service.
November 11, 2018
For more see: https://www.lep.co.uk/news/inquiry-call-over-lancashire-county-council-105m-virgin-care-health-contract-1-9241205
