It is amazing how little say we, as taxpayers and most importantly users, actually have over the jewel in the crown of public services – the NHS. 

For example, a couple months ago, Oxfordshire County Council’s Joint Health Overview Scrutiny Committee (JHOSC) asked Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock to reconsider the decision to privatise Thames Valley cancer scanning service (PET-CT), handing the contract to InHealth, a private healthcare company. 

The committee gave really clear and persuasive reasoning for its decision to throw the proposal out, pointing out all the procedural, consultative and practical failings of the bid and did so in the most damning terms. 

But it’s no surprise that the appeal was ignored by the Secretary of State. Hancock refused to intervene on the dubious grounds a ‘partnership’ was forming between InHealth and the hospital trust. 

As critics pointed out, ‘partnership’ is an odd term to use where an unwanted private company is given control of the contract and then subcontracts the work back to the hospital trust, which is then expected to work for the company to ensure the service is delivered. 

In effect, the Government hands responsibility for cancer screening to a private company which has to make a profit and over which we have no control. The Churchill Hospital simply becomes a ‘sub-contractor’, able to be replaced by who knows what or whom? 

If this were the only example then, serious as it is, the public who fund and use our NHS might be accused of being paranoid. Unfortunately, this ‘creeping privatisation’ is happening all over the country. 

For example, back in 2013 NHS Warrington and Halton Hospitals Trust in the North West introduced MyChoice, a system for patients to pay for varicose vein procedures no longer deemed essential. 

So far so good, after all it’s just one procedure, isn’t it? Then, earlier this year, the list of procedures being marketed by MyChoice was hugely extended to over 40 procedures, from knee and hip replacements at up to £18,000 to hernias at £7,700 and removing cataracts at £2,000. 

We know NHS rationing has seen more hip and knee surgery requests being rejected by CCGs, up 45 per cent in the last 12 months and, for the majority of us without private health insurance, the price list was and is frightening. 

A couple of months ago we learned of the ‘super hub’ surgery proposal for Bicester, again a development introduced with little forewarning. 

It seems only when the full implications of fundamental changes to the NHS locally are about to happen does the public get to hear. 

With the NHS, it’s often too little too late, but even where we mount a long term campaign – Save the Horton being a classic example -our objections are ignored. 

No-one doubts the problem is chronic underfunding of the NHS at a time when demand is rising, but privatising the NHS, whether by stealth or not, threatens us all.

Bicester Advertiser column from Chris Howells, Chair of Banbury and Bicester CLP