Blair calls on firms to help run hospitals
June 7, 2006
By Robert Hutton
London - Prime Minister Tony Blair is seeking top executives from the UK's largest firms to help run state hospitals amid concern voters may refuse to back more spending on public services unless delivery is improved.
Leaders of firms including Tesco, the UK's largest supermarket owner; Lloyds TSB Group, the fifth-largest bank by market value; and Smiths Group, which makes parts for aircraft, met Blair yesterday to discuss joining the boards of hospitals.
While Blair's government raised health spending per person by 63 percent between 1999 and 2005 to £1 375 (R17 088), almost a million people are on waiting lists. His spokesperson Tom Kelly said the aim of the recruitment drive was to bring private sector expertise to the public sector.
"If, having put in this extra money, we can't show clearly and demonstrably that the service has got radically better, then the consent from the public for investment is in jeopardy," Blair told a conference of public sector workers in London yesterday.
Yell Group, Anglo American, Unilever, J Sainsbury and O2 are also interested in lending their support, according to Kelly.
Blair told the conference he was "passionate" about the public sector learning from business. He is opposed by trade unions and some in his own Labour Party.
Productivity at UK hospitals and surgeries barely increased in the five years through 2004, according to a joint study, published February 27, by the University of York and the National Institute of Economic and Social Research.
The government, which took office in 1997, plans to raise spending on public health between 2002 and 2008 by 7.4 percent above the rate of inflation each year compared with the average since 1948 of 3 percent. - Bloomberg
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