Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting suffered a major embarrassment today as left-wing campaigners swept the board in elections to the Party’s health affiliate on a platform of ending private sector involvement in the NHS.

Campaigners from the Momentum-backed Our SHA slate won the Chair (Mark Ladbrooke) and Secretary (Harry Stratton) positions of the Socialist Health Association (SHA), alongside an overwhelming majority on the wider committee. The SHA is a socialist society which serves as the party’s main campaigning body on health – affiliated for over 90 years, it retains nominating rights for Labour’s MPs and leadership. Senior figures on the Labour right close to Keir Starmer were involved in the effort to win back control.

The re-elected SHA committee have repeatedly and publicly clashed with Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting over their controversial plans for more private sector involvement in the NHS. Streeting has also come under fire from the group for accepting donations from individuals.  Today’s victory sets the stage for further clashes in the run-up to Labour’s manifesto, with the Party beginning a consultation of members and campaign groups earlier this week.

At the 2022 Labour Party Conference, the Health Composite Motion moved by the Socialist Health Association stated that Labour would adopt “a position of outright opposition to and commit to vote against any and all forms of privatisation of the NHS” and “commit to returning all privatised portions of the NHS to public control upon forming a Government”. It also banned Labour MPs from accepting donations from private companies interested in outsourcing NHS functions. The motion passed unanimously.

Official Labour Policy, confirmed under Starmer, commits the Party to “reverse privatisation”. Starmer pledged to end NHS outsourcing in his leadership election campaign. Ending NHS privatisation has polled as the most popular 2019 Party policy which Labour members want retained. Polling also shows over three-quarters of the public support ending NHS privatisation. 

Starmer’s headache on NHS policy will likely be compounded by opposition from trade unions to his privatisation stance. All of the so-called ‘big three’ Labour-affiliated unions – Unite, UNISON and the GMB – represent workers in the health sector, and all are opposed to private sector involvement in the NHS.

Sasha Das Gupta, Vice-Chair of Momentum, said: “The overwhelming vote for Our SHA represents a total rejection of the Labour Leadership’s NHS private sector agenda. Labour members, trade unions and the public all agree – we need to end the scourge of NHS privatisation. Shamefully, however, Starmer and Streeting are completely out of step with the mood in the party and the public – they seem to think the privatisation agenda which helped get our NHS into this mess is the way out. We will work to hold them to account by every means necessary, so that the next Labour manifesto promises to kick out the private sector from our NHS, once and for all.”

Socialist Health Association officers welcome election results

The officers were unchallenged in their positions: thus Mark Ladbroke was re-elected Chair, Harry Stratton Secretary and Esther Giles Treasurer. In a joint statement, the trio said the results “deliver an unambiguous message to the labour movement of support for the principle of a publicly-provided and funded NHS, and the development of a care service built on the same basis.

“SHA members recognise that accelerating moves to integrate private providers into the health service will drain funding from the NHS and turn it into a mere brand for a mess of private corporations – all extracting shareholder returns and cutting services in order to do so. Big corporations have captured top NHS bodies with the intention of funnelling NHS resources into their pockets. They train few – if any – staff and maintain a parasitic role in the sector.

“Members of Labour’s front bench are deeply mistaken if they believe these businesses will resolve the catastrophic problems caused by decades of neoliberal austerity and service cuts. The SHA worked with a radical Labour Government to build the NHS – it will take a strong socialist leadership in the SHA to help defend it. We have that team!”

Image: c/o SHA