Recruiting private consultants to advise on cutting NHS budgets is plunging the health service further into debt, Amicus warned today.
The union said some consultants were being paid £1,200 a day to give advice on how NHS trusts could reduce deficits.
Contracts worth up to £150,000 have been awarded to so-called ‘turnaround’ teams and usually ended up with hundreds of health jobs being axed, it claimed.
Derek Simpson, general secretary, said: “We have to combat the philosophy that private is best. Not only is private provision detrimental to patients, it is costing taxpayers millions of pounds.
“As the so-called ‘turnaround’ experience demonstrates so vividly, privatisation does not provide value for money.”
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