Reform MP Backs Privatising the NHS to Make It More 'Efficient'
Andrew Rosindell, who defected last week from the Conservatives, says he "would not object" to replacing free healthcare with a private insurance system
Reform’s newest MP has backed scrapping the NHS and replacing it with private insurance, saying that the healthcare system needs to be more “efficient”.
Andrew Rosindell, who defected from the Conservative Party last week, told the BBC that he would not oppose a plan previously backed by his new boss Nigel Farage to privatise the NHS.
Asked on Sunday if he backed replacing a freely available NHS with a private insurance system, Rosindell replied that “we need an efficient system that works and we don’t have it”.
Asked to give a yes or no answer to private insurance, he replied “I don’t object to that.”
“We need efficiency”.
Farage said last year that he is “open to anything” when it comes to replacing Britain’s NHS with “an insurance-based model”.
The Reform leader told LBC that the French healthcare system could be a model for Britain’s NHS.
Farage has long flirted with the idea of privatising the NHS.
In 2012 he was filmed telling a private meeting that “I think we’re going to have to move to an insurance based system of healthcare.
“Frankly, I would feel more comfortable that my money would return value if I was able to do that through the market place of an insurance company than just us trustingly giving £100bn a year to central government and expecting them to organise the healthcare service from cradle to grave for us.”
Reform Deputy Chairman Paul Nuttall has also backed scrapping the NHS, writing in a now-deleted post on his personal website that the NHS should not be seen as a “sacred cow”.
“I believe, as long as the NHS is the ‘sacred cow’ of British politics, the longer the British people will suffer with a second rate health service,” he wrote, adding that “the very existence of the NHS stifles competition, and as competition drives quality and chpice, innovation and improvements are restricted.”
Reform UK’s 2024 manifesto called for a tax relief of 20% on all private healthcare and pledged to use more independent (i.e. private) healthcare capacity, paid for by the NHS.
Farage also has ties to the private healthcare industry. In 2024 he became “Co-founder and Chairman” of a company called ‘Action on World Health LLP’, which wants to “reform or replace the World Health Organization” – the international body which helped coordinate responses to the Covid pandemic.
One of its directors is also a director of a consultancy, which advises health care firms.
The NHS is and had always been incredibly efficient. Some misguided attempts to make it more efficient have backfired badly, but it still remains very efficient, although its quality has deteriorated as a result of decades of underfunding. Introducing a private insurance system would mean vast amounts of money being diverted away from healthcare, and into bureaucracy and the pockets of investors. Has Rosindell seen any US healthcare bills? Or even German ones, come to that? Taxpayers may see lower tax increases if universal healthcare is no longer covered; but their outgoings will increase massively as they'll have to pay many times more on insurance. I assume Rosindell either stands to gain directly, or via donors who are paying him to increase their profits.
Looks like the tide's going out on RefUK, doesn't it?
Watching the polls with interest.